And She Shall be Called.....

So you may or may not caught a glimpse of our little sweet pea over these past few weeks or so.  You may have seen her face and not even realized it!  Well, the Mister and I were trying to wait to formally introduce our girl to you when she finally had a name.  Ahem...well, the original plan was for that to be not much longer after we announced the adoption.  I should've known that wasn't going to happen!  After going through about 500 names that I had suggested, along with suggestions from family and friends, we finally agreed!  Seriously people, this is BIG stuff!  Why?  Because the name game has always been torturous for us...this is how it typically goes:

 Me : "What do you think of you fill in the blank with whatever name I was throwing at him at the time?"  

The Mister: "No." 

 Me: "Do you have any suggestions?

The Mister: "No."

Repeat this 499 other times and you will have what our life has been like over the last few weeks!  So, now that I've totally built her name up way too much, let me be the first to formally introduce you to....

Nyah T***

 Before we go any further, because I know you are trying to figure out pronunciation, It's ni (like hi,) -ah.  Her middle name will remain her current name, which I cannot share at this time.  Hence the reason for all of the asterisks!  Now that that has been cleared up, onto why we picked Nyah.   Well, there's the fact that I've always loved the name, and once we discovered the meaning of the name, it kind of sealed the deal for us.  We've never been much into name meanings, but the name Nyah is actually of African origin and means, "one with a purpose."  Done.  That was all I needed to read.  My girl...she has a purpose.  I can't wait to get my arms around her so we can watch her beautiful life unfold in front of our very eyes.  

Oh yes, so now that you know her name, let me introduce you to her.... 

 Our beautiful princess!

....and yes, you will notice that in the younger picture below, she has more hair.  They are shaving my poor girl's hair!  Um, can you say, hair bows?!?!?!

As far as where we are in the process, we are waiting for our home study to be finished up. We are praying that our home study will finish up within the next 3-4 weeks, and wrap up a few other things so we are able to send our dossier to China by the end of October.  Maybe???  Hopefully???  Man, I sure hope so!  Don't you just want to squeeze those little cheeks too?

The Story of #4

In case you missed it, which I doubt anyone who is reading our blog has, we are on the road to adoption once again!  We are so excited, overwhelmed, nervous, you name it!  This time we will be going back again to that “large Asian country,” but this time, to return with a beautiful little lady!  Our sweet girl is currently just 17 months old, and this momma is doing everything I can to get our arms around her before she turns 2…which I think may be a long shot, but you never know!  

The Mister and I had been going back and forth on if a fourth was in the cards for us as a family.  Because the Mister was considering the possibility, I conveniently let our agency know that we could quite possibly be searching for a little girl over the coming months.  Well wouldn’t you know it, around early July, our agency presented us with a file of a sweet little one, just 16 months old!  The Mister and I talked and prayed about her and the decision, and decided that she was to be the newest member of our family!  

Now backing up to the month of June, I was approached by a friend to consider writing a guest post for the website, No Hands But Ours, about our little guy’s special need…cerebral palsy.  She had mentioned to me that they were looking for someone to write on that specific need, because apparently many prospective adoptive families considered it to be one of the more “scary” needs.  It sounded funny to me that anyone would call it a scary diagnosis!  I prayed about the post, knowing it would reach a much bigger audience than my little blog here, and also since I don’t consider myself to be nearly as good as a writer as many of the mommas whose blogs I follow, but I felt like God was calling me to write what was on my heart.  I won’t repeat the whole post for you…you can read it here, but I wrote these words just days before receiving our little one’s file.  Why does that matter?  Well friends, it all comes down to God’s perfect timing.  I say that because I genuinely feel that He used what He had laid on my heart to write to comfort us in making our decision about adding that little one to our family.  Why?  Because our new little one will also be diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy when she arrives home…and her scans…they are scary to me.  Yep, I said it.  Scary.  The word I had thought was so funny to use in conjunction with my precious little man was just the word that came to mind when I was reading over my little love’s file.  If you have stopped and read my guest post on No Hands But Ours, you are probably getting the connection here!  That post, if not written for any other person’s benefit in the entire universe, was written for me.  God was whispering just to me, “I’ve got this.  You need to trust me.”  We were called by God as a family to adopt, and I do know that He’s “got this,” but it’s hard.  It’s not just hard in the adoption related world to trust God, it’s hard lots of the time.  Because if you’re like me, you’re a control freak, you like to try to plan for things to go according to your plan.  But people, the sooner we realize it’s not our plan, faster it will be when we submit to God’s will and purpose for our lives, which is of course 1,000 times better than anything that you or I could ever imagine.  

“Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. ²¹ Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.” – Ephesians 3:20-21

So glory to God…glory because He knit together my beautiful and precious little girl in her tummy momma, glory to Him because He knows her story and can make beauty from the ashes, and glory to Him for continually showing me what amazing blessings are the result of just trusting in His plan.