Seven Years Later

I'm sitting in quite the luxurious hotel room in a solitude I cannot remember experiencing in several years. I should be enjoying myself...and maybe I am a little..but I can't help but thinking:

I miss my baby girls.

I sat in a workshop today at an energizing school improvement conference. As I listened to the presenters describe how to engage others in a school improvement initiative, I couldn't help thinking:

How can I apply these same ideas to raise awareness of the orphan crisis?

How can I NOT think about orphans.

This weekend we celebrated MUCH!

First, we celebrated Ellie's birthday:




I worked as diligently as any good mother to be sure she knew how special she was!

But, the days I like th most are those we celebrated the next day. You see, we celebrated Ellie's birthday on Feb.4th...

Then, we celebrated Josie-Tatum's Gotcha Day on Feb. 5th.
Seven years ago, I finally held in my arms the little girl whose face I'd held in my heart for almost 10 weeks.



Sitting here in the hotel tonight, I completed an online adoption course on attachment. And, all of those attachment issues I read about were quite fresh, as we had watched our travel video on Saturday. We were reminded of the forlorn face we saw for four days:


And, then less than one week later, that face began to shine!


And, I've had the blessed privilege of watching the life of one orphan become the life of one who KNOWS she is loved!




Seven years later:


Seven years later, we are BOTH changed. I believe when a person adopts for the first time, they tend to think adoption is about changing the life of a child. What I know now is, adoption is about changing the life of a family. I don't know that I couldn't make an argument that my life and my perspective on life has changed as dramataically as hers.

Is is any wonder I could not stop thinking about my girls today? Is it any wonder I couldn't stop thinking about 147 million orphans who need someone to hear their cry, who need someone to reach out, who need someone to commit to making a difference?

Is it any wonder I'm ready to hold in my arms two precious souls whose lives I will have the privilege to watch CHANGE forever?

(Check back tomorrow...I have some exciting news to share!)