Thursday, July 12, 2007

The Call

I posted this on my yahoo group through my agency. That group has been a wonderful source of encourgement through this journey. I wanted to share the story will all of you as well.


Hey Guys,I have been wanting to share a story with you all about our referral but needed to wait a little while for everything to sink in. But I wanted to share with you how God has worked in our lives and through this journey. So here goes. When calls started the last week of June, we had not heard anything. From going through previous batches I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that Charlotte was not in the batch. I was sad, but since the day I turned this entire process over to God he has continued to bring me peace throughout. So I cried and prayed and hugged my husband and prepared for another 3 month wait. That same night I received an email from Lisa Cox a member of our yahoo group. She said she felt led by God to contact me. She was praying for all of us waiting and the picture of my family on our website kept coming to her mind. She searched her favorites list (don't we all have lots of blogs on ours too:) and found our website. She really felt that God was telling her that Charlotte was being prepared for us, she didn't know if that meant now or not but she had to let me know. But still no phone call. The next day one of the special friends I have made through the yahoo group e-mailed to let me know she had gotten a call. I was really excited for her family but still no call for us. So I knew it was not meant to be even though we had been praying to get to travel together. That Thursday I was sitting in the movie theatre with my son Ethan waiting for Surf's Up to start. I had just silenced by cell phone when I felt it vibrate. I looked at the # and it was a 703 area code. I could not believe it. It was Lauren and she was giving me info on a little girl. I was in total shock. I called my husband and told him to meet me at home when the movie was over to open the email together. Now don't get me wrong Surf's Up was a great movie, but boy was it ever LONG!!! I did not want to tell Ethan yet, since we still had to read the file, get Dr. opinions and pray over this little girl. My husband and I finally got home and opened the e-mail. Wow it was so much to wrap our heads around. You have this picture of what your little girl will look like and then you actually have a picture. Doubt started in on us immediately, can we really do this. Can we go through the surgeries with her, how will Ethan react, what will our families think and on and on. Now I will back track just a little, a few days earlier (before the call) I asked Jay to write an update for our website. In his reflections he talked about the song Bring the Rain recorded by Mercy Me. I even wrote a post about the song and how it was really speaking to our hearts. We lead worship at our Church and started practicing the song. On the Thursday we got our call we had Praise Team Practice. We were going through Bring the Rain and the sun was shining. All of a sudden I looked up and it was raining, with the sun shining. Jay and I looked at each other and knew that God was nudging us. I also during these couple days talked to Sarah Strand, who adopted little Esther last November with a cleft lip/palate. She was so wonderful. She really helped me see that we could do this. It is so awesome how God puts people in your path for very specific reasons. We continued to pray and over the next day God calmed my heart and I knew that this was our Charlotte. Jay knew too, and before we even met with our pediatrician we had already made our decision. It is so wonderful to know that God chose her and crafted every moment of our journey this far and will continue to do so. Every detail scripted so that we would know his plan. We would know without a doubt that he had given us the desires of our heart. We can't wait to see what the rest of our journey will bring. We know that we are going to blessed beyond measure by this little girl.I wanted to reaffirm for all of us that God is in control of our journeys. He has already chosen our children and he will reveal them to us in his perfect timing. How Great He IS!!!!! It is so hard on certain days to wait, but I sing over and over in my mind "Bring me joy, Bring me peace, Bring the chance to be free, Bring me anything that brings you Glory"Jay and I pray for all of us everyday. And we can't wait to see what God has in store for each of our families.

In Him,Carla L.