More of the "Story"...

I want to share this little part of our story with all of you. While it was happening it seemed sort of like a small detail but looking back even days after it all unfolded we realized how we really had no control over anything, that God had His all knowing hand on every detail of our adoption. We were approved by our agency September 25th. This meant that we would start being shown to birthmothers immediately. We were requesting a girl, any race. Because we were open to race they said that we should be matched or at least shown to expectant mothers within days. A week went by, I called to check in and they said that they didn't know why we hadn't been called about any matches but they were sure that something would come up the next week. I didn't hear anything the next week, but was so busy with fundraisers and homeschooling that I just thought I would wait another week before calling. I called the third week to check in and still nothing but we were at the top of the list. I wasn't pushing the issue too much as we were still trying to pull our adoption finances together. On October 21 I woke up with a terrible uneasy feeling. I called Clint at work and told him that I wasn't sad but everytime I thought about the baby I would cry. Not sad, not happy, just something wasn't right. I told him that whenever I pictured the baby that it was a boy.

When we started this process we had prayed that God would open our hearts to any baby he wanted us to have. We prayed for months that God would reveal his purpose for our lives and what he wanted us to do in terms of adoption. We both had a heart for adoption but we didn't know in what capacity he would use us. When we decided to pursue adopting a baby of our own we then were faced with our openess to race. After praying more about it Clint told me that he felt that if we were doing this for God's glory to provide for a child that needed a family that we should not specify race at all. (This was a personal calling as I know we are not all called to do the same things.) We would just leave it to Him. He knows our hearts and He knows what we can handle. I fell in love all over again with Clint when I heard him say those selfless words. We know that there will be obstacles to overcome, as there are with all children. We have dealt with some doozies with our biological children. We do know that God does not make mistakes and that he will not forsake us. Knowing this has helped us in our parenting. We realize that as parents, we are tools for God to use to lead others to Him and to raise His children that he has entrusted in our care. We are not able to control every situation, and we will just thank God for His grace and mercy day by day.

So back to the first part of the story..... I told Clint that I felt like my inner being (the Holy Spirit) was telling me that it was not up to us to choose whether or not we should have a boy or a girl. If we were doing this we needed to leave it up to God. He agreed.

I called the agency after talking to Clint. My normal adoption coordinator wasn't there so I spoke to someone else. I said that I was calling to make a change to our file and that we wanted to change it to being open to gender. She said that she was having trouble accessing our file and that it looked like it had not been activated. WHAT!!! At this point it had been almost a month. She said that they had matched quite a few babies and that she didn't know what had happened to our file but that she would find out and call us back the next day. At this point I just prayed that if this was God closing the door to adoption that we could be at peace with it. Instead of getting worked up, I decided to just wait until I heard something the next day and go from there. Well, the next day we did hear something. They called and said they were sorry for the mix up and they couldn't explain it, and that it had never happened before. And..... that they had a baby they thought would be a good match for us and could they show the expectant mom our profile. OF COURSE!!! and then she said "It's A Boy" ~ 2 weeks later we met our precious little son. Praise God for being in control and for speaking to us when we are willing to listen.