Thank You

We leave for China in just a couple of hours to bring Emerson home, and as I sit here and think about the journey our family has taken over the last year or so, I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you.

Thank you for praying for us.

Thank you for being supportive.

Thank you for asking me how the adoption was going. It showed me that you were interested in big things that were going on with my family.

Thank you for giving us clothes for Emerson to wear.

Thank you for giving us a dresser for her room.

Thank you for sweet surprises for Emerson: the personalized t-shirts, the beautiful handmade sweater, the non-white girl dolls, the beautiful quilt and matching bag, the backpack full of fun toys that three year old girls would enjoy.

Thank you for the unexpected financial support. It is something we never asked for, and never expected to receive. It meant so, so much more to us than numbers on a bank statement. It meant that you believed in us, and in what God was calling us to do in our family. It lifted our spirits when the numbers looked discouraging, it encouraged us to trust that God would indeed find a way for our family to bring our daughter home.

Thank you for giving me your work shifts. It enabled our family to help pay for this long and expensive process.

Thank you for babysitting Dane, Aidan, and Harper. This entire year, while I've been working more than I have in several years, we have had the peace of mind of knowing that our children have been cared for by people we love and trust. Friends we have known for years, who were in situations that enabled them to watch our children for us. We are so, so grateful for you. Friends out of work, students out of school, grandparents needing their grandbaby fix. We never could have imagined that our childcare situation would have "worked out" as well as it did, so I could work as much as I have.

Thank you for taking our children into your home while we are in China for longer than I want to be gone. Thank you for loving us, and for loving them for us while we're away. Thank you for getting them dressed, feeding them, hugging them, tucking them in at night.

Thank you for taking our children to school while we are gone and helping share the burden.

Thank you for taking a couple of days off of work so you can come to town and watch our children while we are gone.

Thank you for helping us get plane tickets.

Thank you for praying for us.

A sweet friend who is much wiser than me shared this quote by AW Tozer yesterday:

"God is looking for people through whom he can do the impossible--what a pity that we plan only the things that we can do by ourselves."

A year ago, I had big plans to do this ourselves. The decision to proceed with an international adoption was ours, a "lifestyle choice" that we were making for ourselves, and it was no one else's responsibility to have to pay for it or support it. I actually said these words to Brandon last fall. After all, I am a grown up and I can do it myself.

Oh, how the prideful are humbled.

This last year would have been impossible by ourselves. Pure and simple. We could not have done it alone. God knew this way, way before I did, and it has been 12 months of lessons learned. Twelve months of being humbled over and over, of seeing God work, of answered prayers, of being reassured that yes, this is what God wants for our family.

And I can't believe that in just 5 short days Emerson will be with us forever. Then the real fun begins. I have no doubt that these next 12 months will be just has humbling as these last 12 have been.

Please pray for us over these next couple of weeks, and for the next couple of months as we all get used to our new family.

Thank you.