My Plan or God's Plan

For those of you who have recently joined our story (and don't read a person's blog entirely from the beginning to "catch up" like I do), let me give you an update on where our journey has brought us so far and our most recent twist.

May 2007 - We attended our first informational meeting about adoption.

Aug/Sept 2007 - We committed to adoption.  We began fundraising first rather than applying.  The plan was to adopt 2 girls preferably sisters.

April 2008 - I started this blog.  By that time, we had decided on names for our girls:  Keely Page and Maggie Elizabeth.  We wanted them to be between the ages of 1 and 5.  We were still researching countries and agencies.

May 2008 - Bulgaria was chosen.

August 2008 - Agencies were unofficially chosen.  Miriam's Promise would be the homestudy and post-placement agency.  All God's Children International would be the placing agency.  We began paperwork for home study.

November 2008 - Changed agency choices.  We now planned to use Heaven Sent Children for the home study and post-placement study.  We also planned to use Christian World Adoption as the placing agency.

May 2009 - Changed one of the names from Maggie to Mattie.

November 2009 - We made our final change of agency choice (actually applying this time).  Our official placing agency would be Tree of Life.  Application submitted with Heaven Sent to officially begin our home study.  We requested 2 girls between the ages of 2 and 7.

June 2010 - Submitted our dossier.

Dec 6 2010 - We were officially registered in Bulgaria.

August 2011 - Updated home study and USCIS.  Changed the ages from 2-7 to read a birthday after "such and such".  This would make the oldest possible age at most 6 months younger than Colton.  It would also allow the maximum age to rise as Colton gets older.  After much hesitation, we also indicated we would be open to considering boys...but we continued to refer to our future kids as "the girls" anyway.

December 2011 - Finally finished renewing our USCIS approval.

February 2012 - MOJ asked our agency if we would be interested in a sibling group of 3.  We were interested but felt it might be more than we could take on.

So that brings us to March 2012.  Last Thursday, I emailed our social worker to ask her a question about a couple of kids she had sent out an email about.  Not really expressing interest, just curious.  She answered my question but told me I couldn't ask for them because we had a referral coming.  WHAT?  At this point she only knew that we had been matched but knew absolutely no details.  Friday, we got the details.  It shook me a little because it wasn't our plan.  It wasn't the little picture I had created in my head of our lives.  I had pictured 2 cute little girls:  one younger than Eli...maybe both.  Not the case.  Are you ready for this?  We were matched with a brother and sister.  Did you catch that?  WE HAVE A REFERRAL!!!!!  The boy (M) is 9, and his sister (V) is 7.  In fact, she turned 7 just four days before Eli did.  We had always joked that one might be close to Eli's age and we'd call them twins.  So now we have twins (four days apart) -- Eli with his red hair and V with her long beautiful black hair.  I can't wait to start braiding!

Now, I posted all of the history up above to show you something.  We have had our plan for quite a while.  This brother/sister duo is not what I had planned.  They are not what I had pictured.  In my head all my thoughts centered around 2 little girls.  I had their room planned somewhat.  Their ages varied from one day to the next, but that was the most significant detail that was unknown.  When I received the pictures of M and V, my first that was "What?  A boy?"  Would you believe I've actually had that reaction before?  When we were planning a family, we casually talked about future kids' names.  The first one we picked was a girl's name.  When we found out we were finally expecting, we came up with a boy's name but mostly focused our talk on the girl we felt sure we would have.  When the ultrasound showed (very clearly) that we were going to have a boy, we were stunned.  "What?  A boy?"  It took us a good half hour or so to wrap our brains around the idea and decide life would be alright with a boy.  Next Colton comes along, and we fell head over heels for him.  God knew best.  He had a plan better than ours.  Fast forward to our referral.  It felt the same way.  Knowing how everything worked out so well last time, we knew we needed to seriously consider embracing this change.  When I told Colton that we had received a referral, I told him that this wasn't exactly what we had planned, but that I didn't want to get so focused on my plan that I missed out on something God had planned ('cause I know He is a much better planner than I ever thought about being).

We did take a couple of days to think about it, talk about it, pray about it, and talk to a few other folks about it.  I even spent some time staring at the boys' room trying to figure out how to put 3 boys in there.  Long story short, we decided that these indeed were our children.  We are so excited!  Colton and Eli are so excited.  They keep looking at the pictures over and over.  They tell everyone.  They keep asking why we can't leave now and bring them home.  For those of you new to adoption, I can't post their pictures or names or detailed information about them here.  Friends, I also can't email anything to you.  But if I happen to see you in person, please ask to see my pictures (like I won't offer)!  I have 77 of them on my phone!

The next step?  Major fundraising fast.  Big payments are due before we travel, and we have some expensive travelling to do.  We are tentatively planning to travel in early May.  It would have been sooner, but Tim needed to stay at school through the kids' state testing week.  Then we come back and apply for as many grants as possible, do some more fundraising, get the house ready and travel again.  The second trip may be some time in September or October.  Then the new roller coaster ride begins.....

Did I mention they are beautiful????