Eden Joy Part 1

Few things are better than the birth of a child. Am I right? The day we received our phone call telling us of our little girl will forever be etched into my mind. I know exactly what I was doing, where the boys were, where Mark was.....I will forever remember how my heart skipped a beat when I heard Tami's voice on the other end. You see, we were told that after our paperwork had been submitted to Ethiopia the only communication that would happen with our agency was through email. They didn't like to call until they had your referral simply because families would get excited seeing Dove's number on caller ID and think, "This is it!" When I answered the phone and the voice on the other end said, "Hi Becky. It is Tami." I got real quiet. I said, "Tami, why are you calling us?" I think there was a slight bit of panic in my voice. We were not supposed to get a call for at least four more months. All these thoughts went through my head within a split second, "what happened to our paperwork? What didn't we do correctly? Did something get lost????? And then she said, "Well, I have some news for you." And then the exclamations started pouring out of me like a torrent. I never want to forget the emotion of the day, the wonder at finding out about our child, the first time we saw her little face, feeling a fierce sense of protection almost immediately, all crowding around the computer trying to see her, calling all our families to tell them we had a baby girl, going to Life Group that night and telling our friends...... This little girl is the fulfillment of years of dreaming. Recently, in the midst of my crazy "nesting phase" (and believe me people, there is some serious nesting going on at this house) I came upon some old letters written to Mark and all of my old journals. In a letter to Mark before we were even married I talked about my dream to adopt. In my journal I found entries from five or six years ago asking God to preserve our daughter and keep her for us. As I prepare to leave in a week to finally meet her I am in awe at the orchestration of our lives coming together and her becoming a part of us. I am completely in love with this little one whom God has entrusted to us. I thought I would be able to pack into one post all of my feelings surrounding our daughter but I am realizing this will need to be at least a two part post. Partly because it is already getting long and I am just getting started and partly because I really want to go to bed. It is only a little after 10:00 but all this frenzied preparation is catching up to me. So, until tomorrow......