The last 14 days have been a whirlwind for our family. We go for almost 3 years with very little progress on our adoption and then God kicks things into high gear! On July 14, we received a call from our agency stating that a baby girl was brought to the transitional home (basically our agency-run orphanage)on July 11 or so and that upon her arrival, the staff immediately matched her with our family. We weren't even on the waiting list again at that time! We were completely blown away because we were still trying to wrap our mind around the fact that Julianna Ashure had passed away. Well, scroll down to the post on July 14 - "God Speaks All Around Us" (or click here) and read about how God prepared our hearts on that day for the call - isn't He just amazing!
Our new baby girl is 3 months old and is just precious. We have been waiting for about 1.5 weeks to find-out when our court date will be, so please keep that in your prayers. Our agency stated that they would like to have her home with us by the end of August if at all possible. Our court hearing will be a little different this time because the agency is appealing our case, so I'm not sure how all that works. I'll let you know when we know something!
The moment we opened the e-mail and saw her electric smile, we were hooked. We cried and laughed as we stared at her precious face. I'm not going to lie, we were happy and also very saddened at the same time - we were and still are ecstatic about our referral but heartbroken about Ashure's death. If you have read the last couple of posts, you will know that not only are we dealing with our own grief but also people who just don't think about what they say and are hurtful. For various reasons, we chose to keep our referral news just within our immediate family for a short time.
Ashton and our nieces and nephews were so excited about Julianna's adoption and then so devastated by her death that we felt like we needed to give them more time to grieve and process the events before we introduced them to the newest member of our family - and with or without a judge's approval, she is our daughter. Ashton has been asking a lot of questions for the last several days about when God is going to give him a little sister to bring home with him and not to Heaven. He has been so diligent and thoughtful in his prayers. Each day he prays for God to hold Julianna and not let her cry and then he prays that God will take care of his new little sister still in Ethiopia. Wednesday night and Thursday morning, he made the comment several times that he was "giving up" and was "done with it" because he had been praying to God and had waited so long and God took his sister from him and hasn't given him a baby to hold at his house. My heart was crushed. We talked through this each time but his comments told us that he needed to know about the baby and that he was ready.
Last night, we sat Ashton down and gave him the photo envelope from WalMart. He looked at us like we were crazy but he opened it. His blue eyes just sparkled and he knew that he was looking into the face of his sister. He was so excited that he started bouncing all over the place and was just giddy. God was preparing his heart just like He had prepared ours! Earlier in the week, Ashton had declared that when God gave him a new sister, he would name her Mason (that's his best buddy at daycare) but I told him that Mason didn't really sound too girly, so he put his finger by his mouth and thought for just another second and then grinned as he said, "Maura!" (this was his girlfriend when he was 2 and she always called me her "Mudder-in-law). Personally, I love the name but we are still working on Jason. Jason picked-out Julianna so it's our turn now. We'll let you know what we officially decide on.
Our new baby girl is 3 months old and is just precious. We have been waiting for about 1.5 weeks to find-out when our court date will be, so please keep that in your prayers. Our agency stated that they would like to have her home with us by the end of August if at all possible. Our court hearing will be a little different this time because the agency is appealing our case, so I'm not sure how all that works. I'll let you know when we know something!
The moment we opened the e-mail and saw her electric smile, we were hooked. We cried and laughed as we stared at her precious face. I'm not going to lie, we were happy and also very saddened at the same time - we were and still are ecstatic about our referral but heartbroken about Ashure's death. If you have read the last couple of posts, you will know that not only are we dealing with our own grief but also people who just don't think about what they say and are hurtful. For various reasons, we chose to keep our referral news just within our immediate family for a short time.
Ashton and our nieces and nephews were so excited about Julianna's adoption and then so devastated by her death that we felt like we needed to give them more time to grieve and process the events before we introduced them to the newest member of our family - and with or without a judge's approval, she is our daughter. Ashton has been asking a lot of questions for the last several days about when God is going to give him a little sister to bring home with him and not to Heaven. He has been so diligent and thoughtful in his prayers. Each day he prays for God to hold Julianna and not let her cry and then he prays that God will take care of his new little sister still in Ethiopia. Wednesday night and Thursday morning, he made the comment several times that he was "giving up" and was "done with it" because he had been praying to God and had waited so long and God took his sister from him and hasn't given him a baby to hold at his house. My heart was crushed. We talked through this each time but his comments told us that he needed to know about the baby and that he was ready.
Last night, we sat Ashton down and gave him the photo envelope from WalMart. He looked at us like we were crazy but he opened it. His blue eyes just sparkled and he knew that he was looking into the face of his sister. He was so excited that he started bouncing all over the place and was just giddy. God was preparing his heart just like He had prepared ours! Earlier in the week, Ashton had declared that when God gave him a new sister, he would name her Mason (that's his best buddy at daycare) but I told him that Mason didn't really sound too girly, so he put his finger by his mouth and thought for just another second and then grinned as he said, "Maura!" (this was his girlfriend when he was 2 and she always called me her "Mudder-in-law). Personally, I love the name but we are still working on Jason. Jason picked-out Julianna so it's our turn now. We'll let you know what we officially decide on.
Thank you for all your prayers - please don't stop now!
We are asking that you will pray about certain things:
- That God will keep "Maura" safe, healthy, and completely sickness free
- That God will provide for a fast and successful 1st court date
- That God will continue to heal our grieving hearts - "Maura" is not a replacement for Julianna and we are still grieving tremendously for our daughter
- That we will travel soon before our paperwork starts to expire
