Light at the end of the tunnel...

    Well, we got our answer about the 3 kids that I wrote about previously. We are not getting them! We found out about a month ago, but I was in no place to write about it. We had fallen in love with those children, we had started making plans and choosing names for those children. The day we were told "no" to them was by far the lowest day of the adoption process for us. We really felt that God had worked everything out perfectly for these kids, so getting a "no" was very confusing for us. I still don't really know what God was doing through that whole situation, and I may never know. But we have to trust that God knows what is best and that His Will is better than ours. We found out at the same time, that we had gotten our official referral. This is what we have been waiting on for almost 3 years. Of course, we were so sad about losing the 3 kids that we weren't able to even look at our referral. This should have been a wonderful day, but it was horrible. This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. But we had to grieve those 3 kids. When Justin came home that day, he cried like I have never seen him cry, and we just held each other. I cry now just thinking about how hurt we were. The pain was unbearable, I begged God to take it away. And by the end of that next day, He had just turned my heart around and helped me to get past all of that hurt. Justin had a little harder time with it, it took him a bit longer. He had gotten himself a little more invested into those kids, where I had guarded myself more. It was great to see how excited he was getting, but then it hurt him even more when we didn't get them.

    The only thing that we had gotten from our official referral was pictures, we didn't have any other information. The pictures were so sad, not good pictures at all. So going from 3 happy smiling children to these sad, scared looking children was hard. We didn't get that immediate "those are my children" feelings. I don't know what we expected, but we thought we would just know the moment we set our eyes on them. We didn't. In fact we were so confused about the whole situation that we really didn't even talk about the referral much.

    A few days later, we got more information, more pictures and then videos for our referral. They are absolutely beautiful twin, 6 year old girls. They are healthy and gorgeous! Justin was disappointed to not be getting any boys anymore, but he went Barbie shopping for the first time and loved it! I swear, they already have him wrapped around their little fingers and he hasn't even met them yet. :) Needless to say, we said "yes" to them!!! Today is my very first mother's day as a mother!! I don't get to hold my children in my arms today, but they are in my heart. Just knowing who they are and being able to look at their faces is enough for me right now.

    We have probably about 8 or 9 videos of the girls, but everything is in Bulgarian. It is great to see them interacting, but we have no idea what is going on or what they are talking about. Justin had the opportunity to meet with a lady that is from Bulgaria a couple of weeks ago. I probably mentioned her in a previous blog, we just met her by chance (really by God) about 2-3 years ago and have kept up with her through Facebook. She agreed to watch the videos and translate them for us so we would know what is going on. There is one video where one of the girls gets excited, throws her hands in the air and starts jumping up and down. We were wondering what she was getting so excited about. Well, one of the adults had told her that a family in America was looking to adopt them and that's when she gets all excited and she actually says "mom and dad" while she is jumping up and down. My heart broke when I found about that. These girls understand what is going on, they want to be adopted, they are excited about it.

    We fly out to meet them in just a few days!! I am excited and scared and nervous, just about every feeling and emotion is going through us right now. After almost 3 long years of waiting, we get to meet our children in just a few days. We don't get to bring them home yet, we will have to leave them there during the court process which will take between 3-5 months. But hopefully in the fall we will be flying back to get them and bring them home.

When I first started this blog, I talked about how Justin and I had started praying that God would prepare us for adoption before we were even married. Well, we met in April 2007, and after only a couple of months we had talked about getting married and our desire to adopt one day. So about June 2007 is when we started praying about it. Well, our girls were born in June 2007!! God knew exactly what He was doing when He brought us together and has been working out His plan all this time. God is SO good!

    Please pray for us as we fly out to meet them. I have never been out of the country and Justin has only been to Canada. This is definitely going to be a culture shock for us both. Also, our girls do not speak any English and I can only say a few phrases in Bulgarian. We will have an interpreter, but pray that we can all bond and attach to each other. Pray for all of us as we have to leave without them, I know that is going to be VERY hard for everybody. Also, pray that the rest of the finances are provided. We recently had a party/fundraiser where our goal was to raise $4,000. We had a great turn out and ended up raising $3,500. Then we had a few donations come in the mail from people who couldn't make it to the party which put us within about $5 of our goal! I don't know how we ever doubt God, when He always comes through in the most amazing ways! So this trip is totally funded. We will have 2 more fees that will come due during the court process and then it's just the second trip expenses and we are done. All in all, we are looking at less than $15,000 away from everything being completely paid for. I know that sounds like a big number, but God has supplied in big ways this whole time. We have had such amazing support from family, friends and church family. God has blessed us so much and these girls are going to be a part of an amazing family (including our church family!). I can't wait to meet them and hold them for the very first time, this has been a LONG time coming! :)