?????
As I finished my morning time of prayer, I went inside.
David still slept soundly in his bed, so I sat down at the computer in the
spare bedroom to check my e-mail. I browsed through several new messages, and one
in particular caught my eye regarding the chance to meet an older child from
Colombia who needed a family.
I remembered inquiring
recently about an organization that brings older orphans from Colombia for a
summer hosting program, so I opened the e-mail to find out more about the
actual kids coming. Their ages normally ranged from nine to fourteen years old,
and they would stay in the United States for five weeks in order to experience
life with a family. The program welcomes visiting families to come meet the children,
hoping one will consider becoming a forever family to each child. The kids
stayed with families in cities all over the States, but fourteen of them would soon
reside in Austin, Texas, only a few hours away from us. This e-mail included
photos of all fourteen of them.
To be honest, the ages of the kids didn’t speak to me
since we already set our hearts on a girl close in age to our son. I glanced
through the pictures, anyway, looking specifically for a five or six-year-old
girl. By the time my eyes reached the bottom of the page, a picture of a
six-year-old little girl, Viviana, stared back at me, almost locking my eyes
with hers.
I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. “Is this your
answer, God? Could she be the child waiting for us?”
I read her short biography and description, and I soon
found out she came with a sibling, her ten-year- old brother, Juan David. They
wanted nothing more than to be adopted together, of course.
Mike and I never discussed adopting siblings, nor had we even considered
a boy, especially one older than David. But something kept tugging at my heart,
so I glanced at his biography, too. Wow. He and David shared many things in
common, including a birthday month and a passion to play soccer. He also loved
and excelled in Math, the area where David already showed obvious talent, even
at the age of six.
“Could this be, God? Two of them?” My mind raced with possibilities.
I mentioned the idea to David later that day while he
played in his bedroom. “What if we adopted a boy and a girl together?”
He wasn’t against the idea until I mentioned Juan David’s age. “No. No.
No. I want to stay the oldest. I don’t want a brother older than me. No. Not
gonna happen.”
But, as the day went on, I couldn’t get those two siblings
off my mind. David and I talked off and on throughout the day about it. I
mentioned things he already had in common with Juan David. We discussed the
adventure of playing soccer in the yard with his big brother every day after
school. I could stay inside to play with dolls and do hair with Viviana, while Juan
David showed David all the cool soccer moves they do in Colombia.
The more I talked it up, the more his heart softened
to the idea. In fact, he even jokingly asked me a few days later if we could
adopt Juan David and not Viviana. God continued to work on him.
After I shared my thoughts with Mike, his openness
surprised me. “Wherever God leads, we’ll go.”
I printed out those two little pictures and put them on
the refrigerator. We prayed for both of them every day after that.
By the end of
the week, David and I went on a little date together to our favorite restaurant.
While we ate, he looked up at me and said, “Mommy, do you love them?”
I looked into his little six-year-old eyes and said,
“Yes, Sweetheart, I do. I pray for them every day, and I can truly say I
already love them.”
With more maturity than I even knew that little boy
possessed, he looked back into my eyes and said, “Then we better go down to
meet them before someone else does.”
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