First Entry...

Good morning!

This morning I woke up drowsy! Imagine that! I am a mother of three so far. I have one biological son Noah, he is turning two in a couple of days. I have two children in Haiti awaiting their homecoming, BellaVisa age 4 and Elijah age 7. My husband Jason and I have been married for nearly ten years. Last summer we began the journey of adoption. It all began with a question that God laid before my husband... "will you love him". My dear friend Natalie had just returned from a trip to Haiti. She and her husband, and my husband and I were taking a double-date out, and during the car ride she was showing us pictures of the children up for adoption at the children's home. One picture stood out my husband and I. Later that evening the Lord asked my husband... "will you love him?" It was a strange thing for Jason because up until that moment adoption wasn't really anything we had considered for ourselves. My husband answered the Lord in a clip sort of way "Yes." We had no idea where that answer would take us. The child that we both "noticed" in the pictures was adopted out to another family shortly after the prompting of our hearts. This was sorta confusing for us because Jason and I thought that this little boy was ours. Now I understand that the Lord used him to open our hearts to the idea of adoption. A few weeks later Natalie emailed me a photo of a little boy and little girl together sitting on a chair. I already knew a little bit about the girl because of stories that Natalie told of her. I was genuinely interested in knowing more. When I received the email, I called my husband over and had him take a look. I said "Let's pray about them babe". We did. There was no doubt in my mind that God was leading us in this direction... the doubts came along when we were deciding weather or not to commit. It is amazing how God chooses to reveal the inconsistencies of our hearts. When it came time to either make the commitment or not I was in a tizzy. On the one hand I KNEW that this was God's heart, on the other hand I was wrestling with all of the questions, fears, and anxieties of the commitment to add two children that I didn't know to my family. I worried about the adjustments for my biological son, I wondered about the adjustment of these two "black" children into our extended family, I had anxiety over what sort of "issues" these children might have. It was literally one thing after another. I began to see that most of those fears and anxieties were just hidden areas of discrimination in my heart. I didn't know that there was any discrimination in me... it bothered me to realize that there was so much there. I began to ask the Lord to please reveal His heart to me concerning these children. I asked Him to change my heart. After MUCH analyzing and praying we decided to go forward with adopting Bella and Elijah (their names were different at the time... that is a cool story about how we got their new names... I will share that later). Once we finally made the decision to move forward ALL of the anxieties, and fears disappeared, that was interesting to me. My husband traveled to Haiti last year over Father's Day. He spent time with the children, and had the privilege of telling them that we were going to adopt them. Of course Elijah was sooooo happy, and Bella was typical for a little Haitian girl with a man... apprehensive. Jason brought back video footage of him telling my little girl that she was going to once again have a family, I wept at her timid reaction. I knew that I had to get over there and spend some "mommy time" with her and Elijah. We planned a November trip. My husband, Noah, and I flew into Port au Paix Haiti the beginning of November 2007 for my first visit. I could not believe my eyes as we traveled along the road in the back of a pick-up truck! I have seen poverty on television and in pictures.... but to see it first hand... you truly cannot describe it well enough. I was shaken to my core with the reality of the lives of the people. I saw a child carrying a basket of something obviously too heavy for him to carry comfortably. He appeared to be about six. I had nothing to give him to ease his load. It broke my heart to see him so young and working so hard. I quickly dug into my bag and found the toy car my son had been plying with during our travels and I walked over to this young fella and placed the car in his hand. He looked at me with surprise and wonder. I smiled at him with tears in my eyes, questioning in my mind weather or not he had ever had a toy of his own. It seemed silly to me to give him something so irrelevant when it was sooooo obvious that his needs were more serious, but I wondered if he would find some happiness and joy in that small token.

More later... my toddler is needing my attention