It Takes a Village--and a leap of faith!

This post is to say thank you.  To you and you and you over there.  You know who you are.  Oh don't blush.  You're amazing and generous and spectacular people and you have helped forever change our lives.
 

You are our village. 

And believe me, it took a whole village to bring home Manny and JoJo.  When we started this process the most common reaction to the news that we were going to adopt two more babies was "Are you crazy?"  NO, we weren't crazy.  We were just doing what we were told.  By a much Higher Power.  Who we were pretty sure was not crazy.  Which, I know, sounds crazy to some of you. 

No, I do not hear the voice of God in my head.  But one day I woke up and I just knew that we were supposed to adopt again and I knew it was supposed to be 2 in one shot.  And I had an absolute sense of peace about the decision. 

So I started mentioning it to Brian--"So what do you think about adopting again?"  That's what I say when I really want something but I think he might not "so-what-do-you-think-about...."  And strangely enough he didn't say "Are you crazy?"  He said "Maybe"!  So I said "And I think that we should go ahead and get two, while we're there".  And he said "Ok".

And then I said "Are we crazy?????" And he said "No, we have plenty of room in our house, and plenty to eat on our table, and plenty of love."  Do I have the best husband in the world or what!

So we called the director of Our Family in Africa (formally Our Family Adoptions) who just days before had posted a notice on the OFA website that they were not taking any new applications and said "I know this sounds crazy, but before you close the door, can we squeeze in and adopt two more babies?"  And thankfully she said yes.

So we dove right in.  We didn't have any money and Brian was already a stay at home dad at this point. But we just knew this was the right thing to do (in spite of the fact that so many people thought it was crazy).  And this is where all of you came in. 

You, our village, our rocks.  The people who didn't call us crazy, or irresponsible, or selfish.  You, who saw what we saw--the faces of two precious angels who were not meant to live out their days in an orphanage.  And you took the leap of faith with us.  You gave us our babies.

You donated money, items for garage sales, baby stuff.  You threw us showers and showered us with gifts.  You called and emailed and facebooked us, just to make sure that we were holding up ok through the long wait.  And you covered us with so many prayers that God could not have possibly not heard them!  You became our village.

Now, I have to say that before this adoption, I didn't really know that we had a village.  We had friends--friends from church, friends from school, friends close by, and friends far away--but out of these friendships emerged a whole clan of people who helped bring our babies home.  Some of them are old friends, some are new, some from our old church and some from our new church.  Some are tall friends, some are short.  Some are people I knew from college, from theatre life, from work.  And some are people we barely know or have only met through the internet.

My village is all over the countrysome on the east coast and some on the west.  Some very special villagers are in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and of course, in Texas--Whitehouse and Fort Worth and Cypress and Waller.  There are so many of you very special people and I hope that you all know who you are because I couldn't begin to list you all here.  And surely I would forget someone and that would be a terrible thing because we would not have been blessed with Immanuel and Josias if it weren't for each and everyone of you.

So to my village, to all my peeps all over the world I say thank you and bless you and we couldn't have done it without you.  No really, we couldn't have!  Just look what you made possible.



Immanuel's referral photo--approximately 3 weeks old



Josias' referral picture--approximately 1 month old



The little mama hard at work.



What Grace had waited for all those months--a chance to feed "her babies".

Now that the boys are home, people don't tell us we're crazy quite so often (at least not to our face).  But we do hear the phrase "Boy, you sure do have your hands full!"  We literally heard that at the grocery store from 4 different strangers today.  Well, yes we do, but our hearts are even fuller.