Hands and house

Hands and house

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Telling the story...

On Tuesday March 31st we got the call that matched us with our sweet Georgia. We now can see her beautiful face and dream of kissing her chubby cheeks! The kids carry her picture with them everywhere and announce to anyone who will listen that they have a sister waiting in China while I have her mine tucked under my pillow each night.
There is so much to say about our sweet girl but there is something that I must do first. You see, we found her on that Tuesday but God's story goes much deeper and I do not want anyone to miss even the minutest detail of His extravagant love for this little girl. To do the story justice I need to go back, way back.
When we were living in Arlington, WA in our sleepy little house tucked into the woods, we were sure that our family was complete. We had jumped into parenthood with more than just a bang, adopting Ravenna at a year old in April and birthing Parker a few months later. Our house was instantly bubbling with all that two very small ones bring and we were hanging on for the ride. Then...God stepped in. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a groggy morning person. Seriously, Ravenna prays every night for me to get a good sleep! It may have something to do with the fact that she crawls into my bed at some ungodly hour each morning, meows in my face and wants to play "mama kitty" to which I always answer, "humba lfuba mmrrr" which means, "mama kitty needs her coffee first". Anyhow, out of the blue I started waking up, wide awake at 2am. I am not talking I heard a noise and it woke me up awake but awake enough to run a marathon if I needed to awake. At that time two things happened, I had a VERY vivid picture of Ravenna holding Parker's hand and Parker holding a little dark haired girls hand and they were walking down a gravel lane. And the second things was that I almost audibly heard the words "PRAY". This happened multiple times over the next few months. I would kneel next to our bed and pray until I felt like the Lord released me and then fall back asleep.
Now, this pretty much freaked me out. I had not experienced anything this vivid before. I was sure it was God but did not know what it meant, was I praying for our child, for someone else's child, orphan's in general? What was this prayer? I did not tell Doug about it for awhile because I did not want to wig him out or talk about the possibility of adoption again as I was barely treading water with our two kids.
Finally, about six months later I did tell Doug. He did not know what to make of it except that it did seem like it was from God and that he was not up for adopting again unless God made it very clear. So we continued to talk about it and sort it out and as the waking up continued and as what felt like every possible adoption related thing in the world randomly crossed my path, we decided to talk to our pastor.
So we called up our pastor and he confirmed that it seemed like the Lord was leading and that it seemed like maybe we were supposed to adopt again but that we should wait and pray until we both felt like it was time.
These things are key because, now that we know who Georgia is we can see: those dreams started right about when she was conceived AND that conversation with our pastor? Was the week that she was born, it could have even been the day that she was born. See why I need to tell the story?
SO, back to March 31st. Hang in there, because God is not done with this story yet! For the last week (before the 31st) a certain heart condition kept coming across my path, via email, blogs etc. It was called Tetralogy of Fallot. We did not have this condition on our special needs list with our agency. Every time I would come across it I had this thought way back in my mind, "I wonder if we should add this to our list..." By Monday night, I could not stop thinking about Tetralogy of Fallot so I emailed some families that I knew who had kiddos with this condition. On Tuesday morning I woke up to (along with the "baby kitty") a bunch of emails back from these families all saying that the condition is more complicated but once their kids had open heart surgery they were able to lead healthy active lives and even that Olympic gold medalists have had this condtion. So, at 7:30 am I emailed our adoption agency asking to add Tetralogy of Fallot to our list....30 seconds later I got a call from our adoption agency. Are you ready for this? At the EXACT same time that they read my email the file for little Hua Yu Xian came onto the adoptable list! The exact same time! Guess what condition she has???? Tetralogy of Fallot......
See what I mean? It is a story that must be told! We are nervous, ok very nervous about stepping into open heart surgery and all that is within it but...we step in with ABSOLUTE confidence that this is our child that the Lord chose to be in our family!
I will leave off for now ("baby kitty" is about up from her nap) but comeback because there is actually more to the story....
Shannon

6 comments:

Mandi said...

Shannon,

My name is Mandi and we have similar stories right now. We just received PA for our son and announced it today on our blog. What started out as a 2 part story, turned into a 4 part story. Like you I felt that I needed to tell the story of how He led us straight to our son.
If you get a chance, please check out our blog. I have a feeling (based on your followers) that I know where your daughter is. If so, our children are in the same place.

Mandi said...

Oh, and I cannot wait to hear the rest of the story.

Staci said...

Hi Shannon,
Thanks for inviting me to view your blog. I love your story. One of my best friend's nephews had Tetrology of Fallot, and he is just great. He had his one surgery and it was completely fixed. We pray for Georgia and Sophie every night! I can't wait to find out when you travel. We just got our PA today - what a relief! Our dossier goes to China tomorrow!

Kay Bratt said...

Great story-- thank you for sharing your heart.

Miller Moments said...

Thank you for letting us share your journey via a blog. I remember how exciting it was to read your blog about Ravenna and can't wait to read more posts about little Georgia.

Jen said...

Shannon,
What a beautiful story. My daughter was also born in Aug 2007 and has Tetralogy of Fallot. She had open heart surgery last year and is very healthy and full of energy. I look forward to following your blog.

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