A New Tradition

Two years ago on New Year's Eve, we were closing on the home we now live in.  It was the culmination of a very stressful few months beginning with the sale of our home in October, and then moving into a rental in November because we hadn't yet purchased another home.  (When we moved from Florida to Georgia in 2003, our house in Florida was still for sale after nine months on the market.  Two mortgages = OWIE!  Didn't want to do that again!)

In addition to moving and all that it entails, we had been contacted right after we moved into the rental by a local woman who learned that we were trying to adopt.  She was the single parent of two and pregnant with a child that she didn't want to raise.  Would we take her child that was due in February?  We were absolutely elated to do so!  Being that she was local, I was able to go with her to her doctor's appointments and got to know her and her two children quite well.  Tom and I also took her several times into Atlanta to meet with our attorney to get all of the paperwork for the adoption in order.  I had nursed my biological children and had heard of adoptive mothers nursing their adoptive babies, so in the midst of our chaos, I induced lactation following the advice in this book.

It was all very exciting, but very draining too.  Most of our belongings were in storage, we hadn't found a house yet, we had a baby coming very soon, I was on a rigorous pumping schedule (every two hours) and it was Christmas time.  Christmas shopping?  No time!  I was either with the birth mother doing something baby related, or with Tom house hunting.  Christmas tree?  Couldn't find it, so we bought a little Charlie*Brown tree.

I had bought a couple of gifts for the kids earlier in the year when I found things on sale, and that was going to be the extent of our gift giving that year.  Time was moving at warp speed with everything we had going on, and it occurred to Tom and I late in the afternoon a few days before Christmas, that he was leaving on a trip and wouldn't be home until after Christmas.  If we were going to have a Christmas dinner and exchange gifts, it had to happen in the next few hours (being married to a pilot means that you never celebrate anything on the actual day).  There wasn't any way I was going to be able to deliver on the dinner as my whole kitchen was in boxes.  Pizza it was for Christmas dinner!

Kitchen contents in the rental waiting to move to their permanent home!

Following our elegant pizza dinner, I realized that the kids' gifts weren't wrapped and I didn't have any wrapping paper.  So do you know what I did?  I brought the gifts out in the store bags, grabbed a towel, and wrapped each gift in the towel, and tossed it at the child it was to go to.  The kids called it the best Christmas ever!!!!!!!!  We laughed so hard and had so much fun!

This year, we had our Christmas dinner and gift exchange on December 19th due to Tom's schedule.  We always let the kids open one gift the night before our exchange, and this year, they requested that we do it like we did two years ago.  From that crazy busy Christmas of 2009, a new tradition has been born.  They got out our Charlie*Brown tree and I wrapped their gifts in blankets, and now we have a new tradition!

To finish the story, in late November 2009, we found a home on acreage that was in foreclosure.  After jumping through a bazillion hoops and making repairs on a list that was a mile long in order to make our lender happy, we finally closed and spent the month of January moving in.

A few weeks before our birth mom was due to deliver, she and I went on a tour of the hospital.  I met with the lactation consultant at the hospital who was very excited that I wanted to nurse as an adoptive mother.  The birth mom thought it was "neat" that I wanted to do that.  She was very honest and told me that she just wanted the baby out of her and for it to go away because it reminded her of the father whom she loathed.  We went to her 37 week appointment and an induction date of February 10th was set.  

She texted me later that day and told me how happy she was that her baby was going to such a wonderful family.

And then I never heard from her again.  

We learned from a mutual friend several weeks later that she had given birth to a little girl and had placed her with an agency that "reimbursed" birth moms for pregnancy expenses.  Georgia law prohibits that kind of activity, as well as just about every other state in the union, and that's all I'll say on the subject.

 Our new house two days after the baby was born.  

We don't see snow very often, so this was a treat for the kids!

Our hearts were broken, but we trusted that our Creator, our Redeemer, our King, was working His perfect will for His glory and our good.  We trusted Him and pressed forward with hope that He would grant our desire for more children.  I will take this opportunity to thank Deborah at Christian*Adoption for her prayers, her encouragement, and her wise counsel!  She was instrumental in helping us get back in the saddle and move forward.  Our profile went back online and just four months later, Luke's birth mom made contact with us.  Praise the Lord for hearing the prayers of His children and answering them in His perfect time!  That little baby girl was never meant to be ours.  Whatever the Lord's purpose was in putting us in that birth mom's life, it was fulfilled and we have peace in knowing we did what He called us to do.  When our world felt like it was falling apart, the Lord had already begun to knit Luke's being together!  He answered our prayers beyond what we ever could have imagined.  We are filled with an indescribable joy and crazy IN LOVE with LUKE!

The point of this post was to tell you about our new tradition!  I didn't intend to give you so many details about our life two years ago, but after I mentioned them, I didn't want to leave you hanging!