A funny thing happens on the way to your future. A future you have all planned out nice and neat. I'm going to have a husband and two children and have a nicely packaged life.
I'm sure Yahweh is sitting up on His throne laughing His head off. (I know He must have a sense of humor to have me as one of His)!
Just wait, He says. Just wait to see what I have in store for you.
So I have a husband and my two children. That's enough for me I say. My heart is full and so are my hands. Then I change husbands. (Yes that happens sometimes). And the new one comes with two children of his own. Pretty nice ones, too. They are cute little 4 and 6 year olds and of course I fall in love with them just like my two. Now we are four!
A few years go by and Tom and I talk and think how it would be if we added another so we did. Then we thought about how by the time that little guy was in school the other four would be grown and gone and since we didn't want him to be an "only" so we added another one to make six.
Whew! How did that happen? But now we were really done. I mean, really done!
Many of you know the story how a Ukraine orphan came to us out of the blue one summer day opening our eyes to the way of Ukraine teen orphans. Vlad changed our lives in so many ways. We brought him home as our son in March 2013. So there were seven.
Again we were done. We decided to host more children in summer of 2013 and found forever families for them. Then decided to host two more in winter and found a family for one of them. He found the perfect family for him which was fantastic. The other one wound his way into our hearts. So we talked and decided to bring Yuri home. It was hard jumping into the adoption world again with it's mounds of paperwork and the crazy money needed. We had just retired Tom from the corporate job that was literally killing him so we didn't have that income. We jumped into fundraising and I ramped up working Arbonne to raise the money.
Then a few weeks later we heard about Kristina. Kristina, the younger sister of Vlad's friend from his orphanage who was murdered just six weeks after being put out of the orphanage, devastating all of us. We never knew she had a little sister. When we found out we knew that she needed us so we said yes to her as well.
When the social worker came to do our home study we told her to write it for three. Why? I have no idea. We had no intention of three. We had chosen two and that was enough for us. I sent in the paperwork to U.S. Immigration and put down the number three as well. Again, I have no idea why. Mainly to match what was on the home study.
Going along, fundraising, working on our Ukraine dossier and having it almost ready to send over I got a message on Facebook. Would I know of a family who is already in process with paperwork that might want to adopt a girl who would be 16 in July? If someone isn't already in process there wasn't time before she ages out of the system. I put it out to some people and no one was ready.
Tom and I talked, again. OK, let's see if this is right for us. We contacted a hosting agency that was familiar with her to see if we could get anymore details. They told us she was already chosen for hosting. We asked if they were going to adopt and was told the family wasn't sure but they would step aside if someone was willing to adopt her. Someone from the agency talked to the girl and she said no, she wanted to be hosted first.
What she didn't know is that if she is hosted that would end the possibility of adoption because she was aging out.
Tom and I went on some errands earlier today and talked about it. I was sad but there was nothing we could do. He said it's too bad there isn't someone who can talk to her to tell her the truth and give her better information to make her choice. I said, I know, me, too.
When we got back home I had a message waiting for me on FB. The woman who told me about her in the first place had some news. Her adopted daughter is the girls best friend and they were talking via the internet and when the girl was told about our family she changed her mind completely. She said, yes, yes, yes I want to be adopted by them.
So now we are announcing that we are also bringing Anya home to us. And that makes ten.
Looking at that number brings a smile to my face. I look up and wonder at the mysteries of how a person can go from where I was to where I am today. A person who, growing up, didn't even babysit because she didn't like kids all that much. And now I have ten! Crazy number!
And my husband is the same.....never thinking for a moment he would be a father to ten children.
So I'm thinking this out. Next year we will have six teenagers in our home. Three girls and three boys. Two in 8th grade, one in 9th, two in 10th and one in 11th. Should be pretty busy around here!
So that's it.....for now.
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