I went into a little bit of a mental hibernation! I forgot that we hadn't written anything about the circumstances surrounding the adoption of this little girl. (Thank you Michelle for your prompting)! So, here is an overview of what happened.
The evening of June 11th - My fear was confirmed as we found out that after 5 years, I no longer had my job. The reason? We were told was due to low school enrollment.
The morning of June 12th - I was praying "Lord, how on earth are we going to fund this adoption? We know this is your will for us."
The afternoon of June 12th - One of my grandmother's passed away.
The evening of June 12th - We got a text from Sue (our adoption coordinator) who said that she had a potential birthmother match. The birthmother was due August 16th. It was a little girl (which had been our desire to have a daughter). The birthmother didn't smoke, drink, or do drugs. We were told to be prepared for adopting a newborn with a meth addiction. There are a fair number of newborn's put up for adoption have meth addictions (they wean the babies off after birth and the babies can function normally just like everyone else). Before we pursued adoption we were aware that this was a possibility. To be honest, it scared me, but regardless we knew God would give us the grace to do what He wanted us to do.
Back to the story. The evening of the 12th, I knew when I got that text that this was what God wanted us to pursue. There was a peace & excitement that I cannot fully describe. When Robert got home, we prayed a lot. That's an understatement. We were still trying to mentally grasp that I had lost my job & process the fact that my grandmother had died. We prayed. We watched an episode of something, and then prayed some more. There was no good reason why we shouldn't pursue this, except for the issue of finances.
We needed to have the rest of our adoption cost at the placement of the baby. After much prayer, we decided to accept this placement. We also sought counsel as to how we should proceed to get the rest of the money. We found out after we accepted placement that the birthmother could go as early as 30 days before the due date. We decided to do a Facebook-A-Thon fundraiser for a portion of our overall cost $7,000 (because we had no idea when the baby would come).
Miraculously, in a little over two weeks time God provided over $7,000. If you were following the blog you also saw that an anonymous donor matched part of our remaining $1800ish funds. In two days we raised nearly $2500 (as we received some donations before the matching). We are still amazed at that and to be honest I don't think we have really "realized" what all has happened the past few weeks.
The Lord has graciously provided all the furniture we needed for a nursery, clothing for Talitha, and so much more. It's been so crazy trying to prep a nursery in the midst of everything but we are blessed with family & friends who made sure we had what we needed.
To make a long story even longer, I have been asked many times where does the name Talitha come from? We actually have had the name picked out for some time (Praise God because we had a difficult time picking paint color, the name would've been 10x more difficult under the circumstances). Last summer after the second miscarriage (literally like 4 or 5 days after), we traveled to the Rocky Mountain National Park near Estes Park, Colorado. I met a woman while washing dishes... One thing lead to another and somehow we got to talking about having miscarriages. She had one. After that she went on to have 3 healthy, full term pregnancies. Her firstborn daughter was named Talitha. I fell in love with the name & Robert thought "it was cool". It is the Aramaic name for Little Lamb or Little Girl. This word is used in Mark 5:35-42. Jesus' healing of Jarius' daughter. So fast forward a little... After the third miscarriage, while I was in the hospital one of my nurses was named Talitha. The only two times I had heard that were after the miscarriages. Recently I found out that the nurse Talitha is actually married to one of my brother's really good friend. We knew then that our firstborn daughter would be named Talitha.
Sorry for such a long blog post. There was a lot to say. We are now awaiting our Talitha to join our family. Please pray for a quick and healthy delivery. We are also praying that this is indeed the child that the Lord will add to our family.
Did I mention I also finally was medically cleared? After a year of waiting and monthly blood test, I am healthy. Praise the Lord that no molar tissue developed (which is actually a treatable cancer type of tissue). We are very grateful!!!!
We are in awe of what God is doing!!!!!
