10:38

This is a story of best friends and a miracle.  (Shout out to my other best friend (bc I'm lucky enough to have TWO!) who would do me the greatest pleasure of staying IN the same state as me!! ;) Love you SO much C!!! So so much!)

So, this is a long, but in my humble opinion AWESOME story.  And I want every single detail of this morning to be recorded so that in years to come, I can go back and read and be absolutely giddy all over again.  Despite it's length, I'm going to do my best to give a choppy cliff's notes version.

It starts on July 19, 2011.  We had officially started our adoption process one month prior with our placing agency but today was the day we went in to speak with our home study social worker Megan- who is a ROCKSTAR. ;) Among things, we discussed that another family was in our very similar situation (some behind the scenes requirement stuff) and she asked if I wanted to have her email to contact her for support, guidance, etc.

I emailed Amanda.  And she was fabulous.  Like really fabulous.  And although they were just a few months ahead of us in process, their IAC training had been postponed due to the April 27 tornadoes that year, so they were rescheduled for training the same day as we were.  Fate begins right here.

Michael and Amanda come into our lives and our hearts during training day, and a beautiful friendship between two families blossomed.  We continued to talk and text almost daily and became the best of friends.  And then very shortly after, God called them back home to Loiusiana.  And I cried.  A significant amount.

If you don't know my best friend history, it isn't pretty.  Several years prior, I lost a bf in a pretty tragic way and I was extremely sad that someone I loved and finally genuinely trusted again was moving out of my state.  I think we both mourned the distance.  We still whine about it on at least a monthly basis.  But it is what it is and you can’t argue with God's placement of your family.

Because of the move and certain other factors, Amanda's husband was not really in the best position to travel to Korea for their son and it would be best if a close friend or relative traveled along side her to bring TW home so that Michael could take days off work upon their return to bond and help the transition for both of them back to America.  And Amanda, my dear friend who at this point I'd only physically been with for one day, asked if I'd like to join her.  Ummm Yeah!  Cue the expedited passport with a mugshot for a photo b/c I didn’t even have time to dry my hair that day before passports stopped being processed. 

And if anyone knows the details of my life during this time, you'll remember that just two weeks prior to our travel, Justin and I made one of...no *the* hardest, most heart wrenching decisions, of our lives.  And we all felt that me going to Korea would somehow bring about some peace and healing to our story-which it did.

The trip was amazing.  And hard.  Lots of sadness in my heart, and very hard to see TW grieve leaving his foster family, but also so so exciting and beautiful.  Talking to some key people about my specific situation and receiving peace and most of all, hope, from them. And to see TW join his forever Mommy was an unspeakable honor.  Experiencing first hand the love these foster families have for our children. It was amazing.  And during that ten day trip, I fell in love with Amanda's new son and saying goodbye in Chicago was hard.  SO very hard.

Since then, Amanda and TW have spent a week at our house during a visit to AL and this last April we were able to have both families meet up at the beach during Justin's work trip!  (Thank you again AL Power for being SO fabulous!!!)

Goodbyes have always been hard and the distance between our families is zero fun.

Rewind just a hair to July of last year, 2013.  We had just recently been officially matched with Jack Cruz and shortly after, Michael and Amanda fell in love with their new son, D.  Bc their home study wasn't started, it would be October 2013 before they were officially matched.  Which puts them about five months behind us in their new process.  But back in July when they said YES, Amanda and I started praying.  Praying that somehow, someway, albeit completely unrealistic, that God would let us travel together for our boys.  (During A&M's first adoption, the law was different requiring only one parent and one trip to bring a child home.  Now, under their second and our continued first adoption, the law requires both parents, a court apt, and a second trip to bring our babies home.)

So we prayed.  And prayed.  And prayed.

And our process pretty much came to a screeching halt.  We waited record waits in between each and every step.  Lots of tears and heartbreak.  But all the while, M&A's process was going at record speed!!!! And our hopes got up that God was about to grant us our prayer.

We held out hope of this miracle until last night (Tuesday).

I was sobbing, sad, scared, irrationally terrified of going to Korea.    Between the recent two planes going down and all the terror in the Middle East, I had reached out to a few friends (you are all SO fabulous and I’m SO thankful for your friendship) for prayer bc I was literally paralyzed with fear.  While texting with Amanda about these irrational fears, I also told her that albeit silly, now that I was only four days away from travel, I guess we could go ahead and hang up our hopes of traveling together.  That maybe, just maybe, my second trip and her first trip would overlap.  She sent me lots of encouraging scripture and told me to go to bed.  That things are always better in the morning.  So I slept.

And I awoke to a new day, with God whispering calmness into my spirit.  P had a good morning walking into school, I ran into one of J’s best friend’s mom at WalMart and chatted for quite some time, and I gathered some last minute (hopefully) supplies for our trip.  Nothing out of the ordinary, but I was extremely tired from my night of whininess and at this point, also pretty hungry.  So I decided to head to Sonic for a cheap “happy” and some time to roll down my windows and work some on my Bible study.  

And as I'm indulging myself in the dollar menu (which was really more the dollar and a half menu b/c a certain waitress waltzed right back in with my extra dollar without giving me my $0.64 change, holla) I get a text from Amanda that someone submitted to court the same day as her had a Sept 17 court date!  We were ecstatic knowing that she was about to get her call!!!! We quickly ran down the dates and realized that with us staying a few days after court and her getting there early for their meetings, that we would literally be missing each other by mere days.  DAYS.

So I set up a plan.  We were gonna irrationally pray for a selfishly silly ridiculous miracle.  That for whatever reason, they split up her group and have some a court date the week prior, being Sept 10.  That she would come one or two days early and we'd be in country for at least one day together!! And I began to pray.

I rolled down my windows and sunroof and prayed my crazy prayer with ALL my heart.  Dear God, we've been through SO much in almost three and a half years.  PLEASE.  Give us this one joy.  Please supernaturally change the date in everyone's mind.  On everyone's calendar.  Give them the 10th.  Give them the 10th.  I'm really begging here.  Please!!!!

And as I'm praying I got to thinking that with my windows and sunroof down I wouldn't hear her call back.  So as I'm rolling everything up, I also turned over my phone so I'd also see the screen light up and guess. who's. calling?!

I missed the call but quickly dialed back thinking she had a question or something bc like only three minutes had past and H wasn't gonna call her till about 12:00 anyway....

And in insane excitement the conversation goes like this:

GUESS WHAT?!

What?

We got it!! (it came in an email)

When is it??????

Are you sitting down?

Yes!  I'm driving!!!!! When is it?! When is it?! ...thinking ok....she's really excited!! Holy cow maybe it's the tenth!!!

I mean- are you REALLY sitting down?!?!

Yes woman!!!!! I'm driving!!! Of course I'm sitting down!!! Tell me tell me tell me!!!!!! When is it?!?! ....at this point she's SO excited I just know He's given us the tenth.

Sept-em-ber.  SEC-OND.

Que the FREAKAGE!!!!!

I screamed, clapped, stomped my feet (thankful for cruise control and a deserted highway), yelled, laughed, sobbed....repeat.

Y'all.  I was SO stinking excited.

Here I was, we were, BEGGING God for just a few hours for our families to be together in our sons' birth countries, when all along, He was giving us TEN days together!  (Bc they are coming one day after us.). Ten.  T-E-N.

We have been making travel arrangements and plans for them like crazy people all day.

We are over the moon thankful for this miracle bc as silly as it must seem, it truly is one.  We had record breaking waits in our process and they truly had record breaking speed in theirs and it worked out BEAUTIFULLY.

And for this tremendous JOY, I thank God, obviously, our Abba Father for seeing fit to grant two of his children the neatest little “fun” at the end of a crazy, roller coaster process, and for dear Megan, for giving me the email address that started it all...

And Jack Cruz's life verse continues to ring true:

Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask for or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.  ~Ephesians 3:20

Y’all.  We are about to go to Korea!

{thankful for}

the JOY that comes in the morning

best friendships

passports

love that crosses oceans

sonic's dollar menu

calls that come at 10:38

two of the most fabulous social workers on the planet

God's humor and love...he's gotten quite a few chuckles in the past week, 

I can guarantee that much