Tomorrow we meet our Daughter!

Wow! It's been 12 days since the last post, and as much as I've wanted to write an update, I haven't been able to put all of it down on "paper" due to the unpredictable nature of this whole process. What am I trying to say????
Well, a week ago today (last Wednesday), we met with the social worker as I had said before to learn more about this little girl. The meeting was amazing. I went into the meeting with pages of questions, but only had to ask a few because the social worker was thorough and gave us such a clear picture of what's has been going on in the life of this precious baby girl. By the end of the meeting, although we were encouraged not to make a decision right there, we 'tentatively' set up a date to meet her. Before we even walked out the of the building, neither Rob nor I had to even speak to each other, we already knew our answer. Just brief moments of eye contact between the 2 of us was enough to know that this was not only what God wanted for our family, but what we wanted as well.

So, after the obligatory 24 hours to "think" about it was over, I called our social worker, and said YES!!!!!

Without further adue, let me tell you a little about her, our future daughter!!! Hanna is 18 months old. She is from Sacramento, and has been living with a foster mom/dad since she left the hospital. We have seen a picture, and think she is just beautiful. Her mom is African American and her dad is Caucasian, giving her a very pretty mocha skin color with big brown eyes (just like Isaiah's) and dark curly hair. She is incredibly tall for her age, in fact although she is 6 months younger than Isaiah, she might be taller than he is!!! (If the myth about doubling a 2 year olds height will give you their adult height holds true.....she might be over 6ft!....wow!). None of the challenges she has faced and currently faces were things that we felt we couldn't deal with. She enjoys dolls and dancing (which scares this tom-boy mom a bit), making me excited to see the beautiful tenderness of a little girl grace this home.

Hanna is legally ready for adoption, which is really just an amazing hurdle that we don't have to first go through. Once she is in our home, we simply have to wait the 6 months waiting period before we can legalize it with the courts. Most of the time, families waiting to adopt children in the foster system, are also waiting for the courts to first terminate parental rights, meaning that the birth family will no longer have any legal rights with that child. This can be an excruciating process for all involved, because the court really does it's best to help 're-unify' the child with the birth parents, regardless sometimes of how interested the birth parents act. We don't have to go through any of that, Hanna is an orphan in the truest sense of the word and is ready and waiting for a family.

SOOOOOO.......the soonest time that we could arrange to meet her, after we gave our 'official' YES (a week ago), is tomorrow! We have had to wait an entire week from deciding yes, until the day we could meet her. And then it may be a couple weeks still before she can come home with us.
Are we nervous? I keep getting that question. Not really, not yet anyway. I think it feels a bit how it did just before our wedding. I wasn't nervous to marry Rob, I was most nervous about the event itself, the spiritual magnitude of it, the weight and importance of it, and even then not until the morning of. In that way, I'm not nervous about our decision or even about Hanna and meeting her. I am most nervous about the 'event' of it so to speak. To think that I will be meeting my daughter for the first time tomorrow, has such enormity to it, the spiritual magnitude of it, and importance of it. I don't' think my mind will even comprehend it fully until the moment (at which point all emotions are a go I am sure). It's strange to think that the enormity of the moment will be nothing more to her than just meeting some new people.

And beyond that, tomorrow begins the day that the coarse of one human life was changed.
God make us instruments of change for your glory, AMEN!