At approximately 11:25am my phone rang in my office. It was Charlie. He said "how's your day going?"....It was the end of an exhausting week so I replied with "um, OK."....He said "it's going to get better"....Still not getting it I responded with "yeah, OK."....He promptly replied "yes, IT IS going to be a whole lot better....want to have lunch with me at Dillon?"......I finally got it.....yep, he was talking about our referral. It took FOREVER for Charlie to drive across town and pick me up and then took even longer to drive 5 miles to the Dillon office. All in all, it was probably only 20 minutes total....but it seemed like hours.
We walked into the Dillon office trembling (or at least I was). We were about to hear the information about a little baby that would become our son. We were taken into the conference room while Katie gathered the information. Then we started looking at all of his information, what little there was. We knew this was our son. We verbally accepted his referral and then the moment came when we saw his face for the very first time. No words can describe how you feel when you see your child's face for the first time. I don't ever want to discount how a mother feels as she's giving birth to a child and actually seeing them for the first time, but as an adoptive mom it's different. What we have is a small 4 x 6 picture of this little baby...no coos, no crying, no little eyes opening and closing...but a small picture that totally opens your heart and you realize that this is the child you will do your best to parent. It's totally overwhelming and exhilarating. We knew from the moment we looked at his medical information and then gazed at his little picture that this little baby boy was OUR SON. God had blessed us yet again with another son. How great is our God?
Later that evening, we showed Ian the picture of his new baby brother. He looked at it intently and said "that's my brother". Then he kissed his little picture. I'm not sure he understood what all of this excitement actually meant, but it was a sweet moment.
The next 9 months were excruciating. What was supposed to be a 3-6 month wait before we traveled to Vietnam, turned into over 9 months. Lots of ups and downs.....a lot of downs...but we still knew that waiting on the other side of the world was our son....our baby Drew.
One year ago today we saw a glimpse of God's love for us....we saw the face of an angel. And...Charlie was right....my day one year ago...October 5th, 2007....got a whole lot better. :)
4 comments:
God IS good!!!! Love the story, and we feel blessed to have been a part of it as your travel buddies!!!
I never tire of hearing referral stories! Now that I have my own story, I understand and love these stories even more. Thanks for sharing.
It sure has been one crazy year. And I forgot how tiny Drew was in that referral picture.
This was a great post! So glad that Drew is home with you now! Hope he gets to feeling better soon!
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