The Day After

It is 9:00 AM, dark as midnight outside, and our hearts are tender right now. Josh and Kenny are asleep, I have been up for 2 hours and Dominick for 4. He and Matthew are watching a movie quietly on our bed.

How do we feel today? Loved. Very depressed. Not hopeful. Loved. Puzzled. Beaten. Loved.

For as many comments as you have read posted we have had at least as many emails if not more. Our church family was, not surprisingly knowing those amazing people, the first ones to reach out to us via private emails and must have been blog stocking simply so they could offer support immediately. It helped.

We will definitely check out the possibility of other children available who might fit in our family. We are not encouraged as it seems other families here in the last year have met resistence with referrals or struggled to find their children and made more than one trip here which we will not do. We are going to exhaust all possibilities so that we can be certain we have not missed someone God may intend for us, we will try to be as open as we can under the circumstances and will see what transpires. The timing of this is not good as tomorrow and Thursday are national holidays here for Independence Day. But we will fight the good fight and see what happens.

I received one email today in particular that caused Dominick and I both to look at one another and realize we were ashamed of ourselves. John Wright, the missionary to Kyrgyzstan over at www.actofkindness.blogspot.com emailed and offered his support. And he reminded us of something that Jayne Schooner once told him when he was overwhelmed with the needs set before him, and they are too numerous to count. These words will guide us through the coming days:

"Stop for the one in front of you."

We don't want to feel like we are "kid shopping" as this is abhorent to us and makes this part of our journey incredibly difficult. But we realized that if we are going to be open to this part of our unexpected journey, we need to throw away all preconceived notions and do exactly as advised..."stop for the one in front of us" and see if that child is a fit even if that child is not what we might have envisioned. Yesterday when a particular child was mentioned to us, we realized we glossed over that so quickly that we may have dismissed God speaking to us and we are ashamed. Thanks to John's wisdom, we will not allow ourselves to do that.

If we leave here without a child, which is highly possible, it won't be because we closed our hearts or minds. We will be able to say we were open to God doing whatever is desired for our family.

And as I type this today, I am at peace with the decision we made yesterday. Totally at peace, it was definitely the right thing for any of the 7 of us. I am grateful that on the "day after" we all feel very positive about that.

Today we begin anew. Are we 5 or are we more? Time will tell.

Hearts won't heal for a long time come. But move on we must, and will do so to tbe best of our abaility.

Thanks for your support and encouragement. We need it now more than ever, and we pray God has yet more plans for us here.