My God has Answered!

This was written on Sunday, May 8th...Mother's Day.

Today was one of those days. One of those day where I felt like the songs that we sang during worship at church were chosen specifically for me... God spoke through the words. I heard His voice and cried...

Niel and I have been on a journey to adopt a child from China. It hasn’t been easy. We thought we were wanting a two or three year old boy. We thought we had found our son... twice. Two times we were unable to lock in the boys we wanted. After the second time I said to Niel, “I have a feeling that God is going to give us a little girl.”

Young boys tugged on our heartstrings. So many people want little girls and boys are being overlooked all the time. We decided to be open to girls but in reality we weren’t all that open. We talked about whether we should even say we are open to a girl when we both leaned toward adopting a boy. I envisioned Ellis sharing a room with a brother and them being best friends. Niel said we should not take a girl off the list in case God dropped one in our laps.

Well, this past week our social worker was here for our home study. On the second day she said she wanted to talk to us about a little girl. Another family had locked in the little girl. She was blind in one eye. The special need seemed pretty minor. After locking her in they read something in her file about another special need. After finding out more info about that need, they decided to release her file.

Our social worker thought she might be a good fit for our family and asked if we would be willing to consider it. She said she is a 20 month old girl and was just darling. She showed us a picture and to be honest, nothing really moved in me. Nonetheless, Niel and I both knew we had to pray further about this little girl. It seemed that God was indeed dropping her into our lap.

Throughout the day I still wasn’t feeling it. There wasn’t a video of the little girl so I could not get an idea of her personality like I did with the other boys we fell in love with. I struggled with this.

The next morning Niel said he had been praying about her while lying awake that night and he had a feeling she might be our daughter and that we needed to seek out further information about her.

We sent off her file to be medically reviewed. I still was not feeling it.  A little girl wasn’t what we had planned for or really envisioned for our family. Her pictures just showed her sitting in a Bumbo. I had all these fears that her special needs might be very serious, like she was unable to sit up by herself, walk, or speak or even all the above. I felt like committing to her was too big of a leap of faith for me. There seemed to be a block in my mind when it came to her.

This morning that all changed. The first song that we sang in church was the song that goes “Holy Spirit you are welcome here.” I sang the song and I really meant it. The next song was one I had never heard before.

You make me brave

You make me brave

No fear can hinder now the promises you made

You make me brave

You make me brave

No fear can hinder now the love that made a way

I was not feeling brave. I was feeling weak. I was having a hard time taking the leap of faith that this little girl was ours. As we sang the song I could feel my spirit getting stronger and stronger... maybe even brave. I knew that I was letting my fear get in the way of trusting God.

The next song went..

Far be it from me to not believe

Even when my eyes can't see

And this mountain that's in front of me

Will be thrown into the midst of the sea

Through it all, through it all

My eyes are on You

Through it all, through it all

It is well

It is well

By the time we ended the song I knew she was our daughter. I knew God was speaking. I was willing to trust, even if we didn’t get to see a video or really know how severe her special needs were. I could sing the old hymn “It is well with my soul.” and mean it.

She is ours. We don’t have her locked in yet. China has not said she is ours. But, in our hearts we know she is ours.

We prayed that God would bring us our child. We were thinking it would be a boy. We now know it is a little girl.

Her new name is Liana: My God has Answered.

China has now given us pre-approval to adopt her. It will still be about 6 more months until we can bring her home. The wait is going to be so hard. We long to hold our little girl!