Obviously, keeping up with my blog on a regular basis is not going to be my strong suit. My last post was in late November 2009, and it is now June 3, 2010. So many things have happened in our lives over the last 6 1/2 months. Baby J is still with us, and every day he brings us so much joy. Every morning we pray a prayer of thankfulness that we've been able to keep him thus far, and ask God to grant us our wish of becoming a forever family for him.
Since my last post, we've endured a 3 day hospital stay over Thanksgiving for what turned out to be a UTI. Baby J and I took our first road trip by going to Mississippi to see my sister get married in December. We enjoyed his first Christmas together as a family. Of course, we've taken more pictures than we can possibly ever have enough scrapbooks for. The new year brought us his first Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day and Easter. With that came the first experience with rice cereal and then baby food. He's learned to roll over, babble, pull himself forward on his stomach and is working on learning to sit by himself. We've gone to 2 more court hearings, one in December and one in March. The next one is on June 22, which is supposed to be a termination of parental rights hearing. We are hoping that the adoption process will move quickly after the termination.
We can't imagine what our lives would have been like without him. It seems as though our journey to become parents has taken many twists and turns. Some we took eagerly, and others we had to be dragged down "kicking and screaming". As I was sitting in church last Sunday, I flipped to a passage in my Bible from Romans. The scripture reference was Romans 4:17-20. Our pastor had previously preached a sermon on this passage entitled "How to Keep Believing While You're Waiting on God". At the end of his sermon, he said that he felt this message was for the families that wanted to have children and be parents but hadn't had the chance yet. He prayed a special prayer for them. I noted the date of the sermon next to the passage in my Bible. From time to time, I would look at it again, pleading with God to grant us a child and wondering why our prayers hadn't been answered. This past Sunday as I looked at it again, I took notice of the date of the sermon. The date was November 9, 2003. Baby J had been born on November 9, 2009. I'm not usually the type of person that puts much stock in dates, numbers, etc. having any hidden meaning. This time, however, I'm putting my trust in the fact that God knows what we've been through and where our lives are going. He knew 6 1/2 years ago how much we wanted to be parents, just as he knows today. He knew the struggles that we would go through along our journey and that we would eventually turn to becoming foster parents as a way to build our family. He also knew that we would receive a phone call on November 6, 2009 to take a baby boy who would need a loving, stable home. That baby boy would be born 3 days later, and we would bring him home and love him more than we ever thought possible.
There have been so many times I've asked God "why". Why are we still waiting for children? Why are there people in the world who can have so many children, none of whom will be loved or wanted? Why has this happened to us? I don't know that I'll ever have all the answers to those questions. There is one thing that I do know, however. Baby J came into our lives at just the right time. God knew when we would be ready for him. We had to mourn the loss of Baby D and help other children along the way, whether it was for a few days or months. His timing, although hard to understand, is always right on time.
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