our road to birdy {part 1}

this sweet picture was snapped on our first night meeting Birdy

Wow!  The last three weeks of my life have been a whirlwind.  I find myself having brief moments of emotions that well up from the goodness of it all.  In those moments I realize that I am still processing our road to Birdy.  Let's take a step back, shall we?

We have been officially on our adoption journey for two years now.  I submitted our paperwork to our agency in October of 2010.  February 2011 we had our formal training, and the summer of 2011 we completed our home study.  And then nothing.  Crickets, even!  It was so quiet we began wondering, "are we doing the right thing?  Is this the right agency for us?".  And we kept hearing the Lord tell us yes.  Yes this is the right place.  Yes this is the right timing.  Just trust.

So we did.

And then in June 2012 we received our phone call from the Houston branch of our agency.  They had a birth mom that had chosen us!  We were...well...shocked!  We didn't think we were on their radar.  The night we got the call we were praying and kept hearing God whispering into our hearts that this particular path was going to be about the birth mom.  I interpreted that to mean that it was going to be about the birth mom until it was about the baby.  But I was wrong.  I think most of you know how that ended for us in late August.  A placement that fell through.  But a beautiful relationship with a young woman was formed, and I am so thankful for that.  So grateful that we got the chance to be her support in a time that light was trying to break through some very hard years of darkness for her.  

In early September we decided to forge ahead and get our home study updated for our new home.  It was painless and we told ourselves that it was good to prepared "just in case".  Kind of like getting your passport, you just never know when you're going to need it.  (PS-  I haven't "needed" my passport in oh, about 10 years).  The next week I called up our agency in Tyler.  It was one of those moments where I just needed to hear their voices, touch base, make sure it was all still real.  In that phone call I discovered that (a) we had checked all of the boxes on our profile for any and every race, except Caucasian and (b) we were not on the email list for their cases that came up through CPS.  We rectified both of those issues, and that very week we received three different emails for children in need of a forever family through CPS.  

On Friday, October 5, we received an email about a baby girl that needed an immediate placement.  Our agency had received word from the judge in Tyler about her, but knew very little information at that time.  Because of the nature of the timing, they inferred that she probably was having some trouble and the email warned about possible delays and hardships.  John and I prayed about it and felt that we were supposed to pursue her.  We replied in an email and then heard nothing.  As the weekend went on I just assumed that she had been placed, but that Sunday night I had dream after dream of a little dark haired baby girl, and knew that I needed to follow up on Monday morning (October 8).  So I sent another email.  That evening I received a phone call from the director of our agency.  She told me that they had two families in mind for this child and we were one of them.  Their only hesitation on us was that we lived in a two bedroom house!  That was great news because we don't live in a two bedroom house any more!  When I shared that with her, her response was "Ok!  Well, I guess you're the family!  {pause} If you want to be...".  

We discussed how our file was incomplete at that point and that we needed a home study update.  When I told her that we had an update two weeks prior she was overjoyed!  The biggest hurdle was already out of the way- now onto the 20 or so more things that had to be done.  That week!

On Tuesday October 9 I received two of the best emails I have ever gotten.  One was an email with Birdy's pictures in them.  I couldn't believe how smiley and beautiful she was!  Moonpie spoke my heart so clearly when she said "She looks familiar.  Like I already know her".  That was the feeling!  Like she had always been a part of us.  That email also gave us updates on her health and development.  She had a rough in utero experience and spent 2 weeks in the NICU, but today is healthy and hitting all developmental markers!  The second email had the subject line "BABY'S FAMILY HAS BEEN FOUND!!!".  Us!  That was talking about us!!!

I'll stop here- {PART 2} to follow soon!