Referral Day!!!!

December 27th was the day! The day God knew all along would be the day our waiting would come to an end! WE GOT OUR REFERRAL AND IT'S A BOY!

I decided to stay home that Tuesday, because I knew that if a referral came in to our agency, they would let our director know that day. And I knew that we were next in line, so our chances were pretty high that we would hear something, but even though my hopes were high, I definitely didn't expect anything. I was upstairs at my parents house watching "The Chew," and chatting with my dad. Bryan went downstairs to take a shower. It was about 1:15 in the afternoon and I heard my phone ring. At first, I didn't think anything of it, because I set my phone to ring a special ring tone when my agency called, so I knew it wasn't them when I went to get it. But when I picked up the phone it had a weird area code on it, and my heart stopped. I held my breath and said "Hello?" It was our director from our agency! She greeted me and asked how my Christmas was. I don't know why at this point, I didn't realize that this was THE call. I mean, our agency wasn't even open this week because of Christmas, so there would be no other reason I would be getting this call. But I just chatted with her like it was just a normal conversation. It wasn't until she said, "Well, I just received a referral for you..."  that's when I just lost it and started bawling. My dad went in my mom's room to let her know, "I think Monica just got her baby." Everyone was crying, and then I realized I had to pull myself together and tell my husband! I told her, "I have to tell Bryan!" So, I ran downstairs and opened the door and Bryan was there just about to come up. He saw me crying on the phone and said, "Is that it?" I just nodded my head and we hugged each other in the stairwell. We went into our bedroom and I put our director on speaker phone. She said,"I think Monica has some news to share with you, Bryan." To which I said, "I think he already knows!" ;) She laughed and told us it was a boy and his birth date was January 21, 2011! I thought immediately about how cool that was because that was Bryan's number! :) His basketball number was # 21 in high school, so he has kinda kept it since then. She told us a bunch of stuff about what our next steps would be, and that she was going to send us the official referral and pictures in the morning. We were going to have a hard time sleeping knowing that we would see our baby's face for the first time in the morning! Before we got off the phone, I asked her if we could have his name, and she said it was "Dohyun," meaning "Kind Hearted Way." Once we got off the phone, we looked at each other and just started crying! We immediately began to pray and thank God for answering our long awaited prayer! It was such a special moment that I will never forget!

Can't wait to tell you all about him! Pictures and more details to come once our acceptance is official, but just wanted to share our happy happy news!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for your prayers! We are absolutely filled with joy!

 "Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy. How awesome is the Lord Most High, the great King over all the earth!" Psalm 47:1-2

Hard Times...But Worth The Wait!

 

I've been so busy lately now that I'm working full time, and haven't had much time to keep up with my blog, but I know that people have been wondering what's been going on, so I thought I would do another update.

Well, we are STILL waiting for a referral.  I didn't think we would still be waiting at this point, but there are a lot of things that have happened in our adoption that we didn't expect, and probably still more to come. For those of you who don't know, there has been some movement in our agency. They have had two referrals so far, but nothing at all last week. Referrals are definitely not coming in order (this was no surprise, but we secretly hoped they would anyway). ;) The children are cute (of course) and seem to be a bit older now (around 12 months).  Seems like they are referring the ones that have been waiting the longest because of the EP delay, so that's what we are kind of expecting at this point, but you never know with Korea. ;) We don't care about having an older child. There are some concerns about attachment, language, and other issues associated with adopting an older child, but we know that God has handpicked this child for us and we can rest in His decision! 

The past few weeks have been up and down for us. One day we are encouraged by movement, the next day, we wonder if will hear anything at all. We also have been hit hard by some financial issues too. We had been told that it would be in our best interest to go ahead with the homestudy update. We are too close for comfort now and if something goes wrong it could cause us some major delays in accepting our referral. Our update is another $1000 we didn't expect to pay!  We also were recently reminded that we will likely need to hire an attorney to finalize our adoption. I had known we needed this, but just forgot about adding it to our final adoption expenses. In the midst of all of this, we also found out our dog, Rosie, needs to have surgery to remove her bladder stones.  Again, we know the Lord will provide. It's the timing that is hard for us right now.

We thought we would be celebrating a referral during Thanksgiving, but now we aren't even sure we will have one for Christmas.  We also aren't really sure how to pray lately. Should we believe that God will give us a referral soon, or should we be praying for continued faith to trust in His timing? We know that God is capable and wants to provide the desires of our hearts, but our past has shown that God often has other plans for us. We would love it if you all would pray for us and help fill in the gap during this time. This waiting is really getting to us!

Throughout this whole journey, I have always heard adoptive parents say,

"Adoption is hard...but it's WORTH THE WAIT!"

I'm VERY much looking forward to the day when I can know this truth!  Thank you all for thinking of us during this time. Don't know how we could get through this without you!