Still waiting on our TA.....I can hardly believe I am even typing that. It hurts to the core to watch each day slip away and feel no closer to getting to our daughter. It has felt like nearly every turn since getting her referral has taken longer than expected and often hits snags that even surprise our agency. I don't understand why this is happening, but I do trust that God is in control I am trying so hard to remind myself constantly of this. As each day passes it does get harder and harder. I just want to get to my little girl so badly and patience has never been a virtue of mine.....perhaps God wants me to work on that?!
In addition to the TA from China we have been waiting on our update finger print receipt to arrive and our visas for travel. We were so excited to receive our visas via FedEx on Wednesday! With all the craziness going on with the State Department issuing visas we were unsure if it would hold up the issuance of ours for any reason. Our friends were in China picking up their two little boys when this break down happened and they had been stranded unable to come back home for several extra days. Praise God they did make it back safely with their boys and to their 4 other waiting little ones :)
I am praying that my next entry will be one to tell you that we have a TA and announcing our departure date, God willing!
I do have a short story that I really do want to share with you all though and to have it written down for the future.
The story starts back in the year 2000. We were fairly new to our church (then called the Milford Vineyard - now Rivertree). Derek and I had been married about 4 years and had recently lost his father, Gene. That loss had prompted us to try to get started on a family of our own, but months were going by and I was still not getting pregnant. We had gone up front of our church for prayer and our pastor (Steve Caperton) prayed for us and for our ability to start a family. He told us that while he was praying over us God gave him a distinct scene of two little girls playing together. They were toddler aged girls. Of course, Derek and I were excited and thought that he might have even been seeing twins in our near future!
About a month or two later we did become pregnant and in Oct. 2001 we had our first - a healthy baby BOY! We were thrilled, but had not forgotten about the vision the Lord had given to Pastor Steve. A couple of years later we had another boy and then 3 years after that we were pregnant again. On my third pregnancy during the first time they listened to the baby's heartbeat they thought they perhaps they were hearing two! They made me an appointment to go to another location later that day to get an ultrasound and see if there were indeed two babies. My mind raced and I recalled how 9 years earlier Pastor Steve had been given a vision of two little girls playing. I thought this must be it and I am now pregnant with our twin girls! I wasn't sure how I felt about that since I was already nervous about adding just a 3rd child and I kept thinking how difficult it would be to carry twins - even my single pregnancies had not been easy on me.
Well, the ultrasound showed one baby - no twins. Months later we would find out that this baby was also a boy. After the birth of this baby it was apparent that I would not be bearing any more children biologically and I did often think about the vision that Pastor Steve had shared with us that day many years before. I tried to make sense of the vision or word he got for us so many times. I thought he must have misinterpreted or maybe God was telling me that I wold have girls for grandchildren way down the road. That is the thing though you just can't try to make sense of what God is doing in your life. Our brains just can't begin to imagine the path he has laid out before us and it rarely "makes sense". God goes beyond all that we could orchestrate or imagine on our own....thank goodness!
Fast forward to 2011 and Derek and I begin the process to adopt a little girl from China. We had only ever thought of adopting one child so this being a way that we would ever see two little girls in our family never crossed our minds. During that process we are interrupted (a Divine intervention I would say! :) and were blessed with our first daughter, Gabrielle Elaina born in February of 2012.
Now nearly 2 and a half years later we will be bringing our second little girl home in just weeks and she is nearly the same age as our first girl! Why did our pastor see 2 little girls (toddlers) that day when God gave him a vision for us? How could any of us possibly have understood that 14 years later that vision would become a reality? We couldn't have! There is no way that our human mind could have dreamed up such a perfect path. I dreamed of it one way and God new better. He had a plan for two little girls that were yet not even a twinkle in their birth mother's eyes so many years ago. He knew the plan he had for their lives. A plan to prosper them and not to harm them, a plan to give them a hope and a future - says Jeremiah 29 verse 11. In his infinite wisdom and love for all of us he weaves our lives' stories together and if we are able to listen to His voice and follow the path he has laid before us it will be exactly what it was meant to be. Of course this isn't what I ever dreamed it would be 14 years ago when Pastor Steve prayed for us. I think of how many things had to fall just so into place and how easily we could have turned away from what God had for us and for our little girls. I praise God everyday that he helped me to stay out of the way of myself when I needed to. That in many instances I didn't listen so he worked things out (many that were very painful) so that in the end we could let go of what we thought we wanted and embrace the ultimate gift that he had waiting for us that we could have never imagined! I wouldn't have wanted it to end up any other way - even if there was no way myself 14 years ago would have known that! All the joy, blessings, success, pain, disappointment, losses, letting go and rebuilding that took place in our lives over the last 14 years prepared us for exactly where we are today. And to be the parents of 5 amazing children; 3 brothers and 2 sisters and that my friends is worth much more than anything we ever may have felt like we were "giving" up or losing along the way. When we allow him to work God has a way of doing that :)
Thank you for reading and your continued prayers for our family and of course our little Liliana!
Love.
Jessy
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