The Beginning of the Beginning

Not long after Meredith was born, I begin to pray for peace regarding us having more children. My pregnancy with Meredith was fine, but my delivery, not so much. I labored for over 30+ hours with her, and found out afterwards that I had a tilted uterus; which made sense as to why the delivery was so difficult. Anyway, Matthew wasn't too keen on having any more kiddos, but I just did not feel like we were 'finished'.

These feelings confused me, because I had pretty much told God I did not want to be pregant again, and almost feared it. However, I do remember getting to a point where I confessed, "Okay, God, if you want me to be pregnant again, I'm okay with it, if it's Your will."

In the Fall of 2003 we were cleaning out Meredith's room and Matthew wanted to get rid of all the baby 'stuff'--crib, highchair, swing, play pen, etc.; but I didn't have a peace about it. Steven Curtis Chapman has long been one of my favorite Christian artists and I had kept up with their adoption story and began to pray about that possibility for us.

We attended an "I Still Do" Family Life Today marriage seminar in Aug.2003 in D.C., and the Chapmans were there and talked about their adoptions of Shaoey and Stevey Joy.

I remember mentioning adoption to Matthew and we talked about it. Long story, short, at the end of Oct. 2003, we committed to praying about it for a week w/o discussing it with each other, to clearly hear from God concerning His will for us and having more children. I'd signed up to attend a women's conference at a local church on the last Sat. of October. I found out it was going to be a simulcast and almost did not go b/c I originally thought it was a 'live' event. Anway, of course, God had greater plans. One of the main speakers was 'Delilah', popular radio personality, and what did she talk about--Adoption, of course!

The next day at church, I glanced at the magazine display and 'Home Life' was about Adoption, b/c Nov. is National Adoption month, which I did not know at the time. I took all that as my confirmation from God...and Matthew had some confirmations of his own.

From there, we chose America World Adoption Assoc. as our agency, submitted our application and began the process. We began to compile our dossier, which included A LOT of documents.

I'll have to post more later. I need to go......cannot wait for the days ahead to share what else God is doing in our family!