One Year Ago

One year ago today, we had our very first meeting with someone from our home study agency about beginning the adoption process.  After talking with her, we walked to the mailbox together and sent off our application to bring two Ethiopian children into our family.  I took a picture of the envelope that started it all.  (Notice the Black Heritage stamp that I "happened" to get from the post office?  God is so funny...)

It's incredible to reflect on how our lives have changed since that day.  We didn't know much about the adoption process at the time.  But everything we've done since -- the paperwork, fund raising, home studies, waiting, praying for our children while they were on the other side of the world, loving them before we'd seen their faces, sharing their pictures and videos with friends and family, switching jobs, preparing our home for two babies, traveling to Africa, meeting her birth mom, grieving over a multitude of orphans, spending time with other families who have also adopted, becoming parents -- all those things have left us different people than we were on August 28, 2009.

I want to look at our children and tell them that they've changed our lives.  And that's partly true.  But really it's the Lord who has done it.  He has changed us in ways we weren't expecting and through means that we never could have foreseen.

Proverbs 16:9  The heart of a man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.

Thank you, Lord, for all the miraculous things You have done in our family.  You are great, and greatly to be praised.