The Day

It was finally time.

The day had arrived at last.

We saw his face.

The face of our son,

The face of the child we had prayed for

And waited for.

But as we started out that day,

June 12, 2009,

Exactly one year ago

We had no idea

That it was the day!

I arrived at work that Friday morning as I did any other day. I was {surprisingly} a few minutes early, so I decided to check my personal email. As the page opened up, my eyes immediately went to the name of one of the social workers from our agency. I knew that name well, as she often sent out emails about upcoming events and training. That's what I expected when I opened it up.

My breath caught in a quick gasp as I suddenly realized this was an altogether different kind of email. A wonderful email. An email I had not expected to be in my inbox on that Friday morning. It was an email with 4 waiting children. Four babies who needed families. One girl and three boys. And one of those babies was our Matthew.

My heart lurched as the reality hit me. I remembered the words of my social worker just one week earlier. We were the 10th family waiting for a referral. We were the third family who was open to children with minor/correctable special needs. Or did she say there were three families ahead of us....I couldn't remember! But I believed that at long last, we were in a position where we might be able to be matched with one of these babies (they match them with the family that is interested who has the oldest homestudy).

I was speechless...almost! I quickly called Brad and told him about the email. I wondered if at this point he would change his mind about the special needs, but he didn't. Instead, he told me to call the woman who had sent out the email and ask if we might be able to be matched with one of the children, and if so, to ask for more information about them. With shaking hands I called her, and was very excited to hear that it was our time. We were one of the families with the oldest homestudies! We requested information about three of the children, and I sat and waited anxiously for Brad to arrive at the church so that we could open the email files together.

We opened the files together, smiling at the beautiful babies, crying as we read their stories and learned about their birth families, hoping that possibly one of them might be our child, but afraid as well to hope too much. There had been so much disappointment in the last 4 years on our journey to become a family....you get kind of scared to hope after a while.

After visiting a pediatrician with all three files, we made the decision that we would be overjoyed to be matched with any of the babies. In my heart, I felt certain that we were going to have a boy. After letting our agency know, the longest week of our lives began. We had to wait one week until our agency's waiting child committee would meet to match these children with families. Let me just say, it was agony.

For that whole week, I carried around the pictures of those three children folded up in my pocket. I prayed for them, I prayed for us, I prayed for the decision that was going to be made. I pulled out those pieces of paper so frequently that little Matthew's face is all creased up!

One year ago today I think might have been the longest day ever for me. Brad was at work, and I just about drove myself crazy waiting for the phone to ring. Around lunch time I headed over to a friend's garage sale just to be with people for a while. Still no call. I returned home, and called my sister-in-law Karen to see if she would come and keep me company. I am so glad I called her - she kept me from losing it I'm sure!

I was eating crackers when the call came. I felt like I was about to be sick, and part of me almost didn't want to pick up in case the answer was no. Obviously though I just had to know!!!!

I will never, ever forget the amazing words of my social worker when I picked up the phone:

We have a baby!

I was outside on the back steps, and I just had to sit down! I couldn't believe it! She told me which baby was mine, and I raced inside, grabbed the piece of paper with Matthew's picture on it, burst into tears, and started saying some sort of jibberish like "He's my baby! This one's mine!" I ran into the living room, showed the picture to Karen, and we both cried and cried as I tried to listen to my social worker tell me about the next steps. Seriously, does this look like the face of someone who is hearing anything the social worker is saying?!?!?!?!

It was a magical, amazing day. To know that at long last, I was a mom...it was incredible. I told my social worker this was the best phone call I could ever receive, to which she replied that it would be the second best phone call ever. In confusion I asked how any call could be better than this one. "Just wait until your travel call!" she responded. Turns out, she was right!

I thank God every day for my Matthew. I thank Him for the times He answered "No" to my prayers so that He could say "Yes" at last and bring me this little boy. I thank Him for pushing us out of our comfort zone and allowing us the joy of being Matthew's parents. Oh, what we could have missed.

As for Matthew's "special needs" - he was born four weeks early and has asthma. I cannot believe this placed him on the waiting child list, but there you have it.

My heart is more open than ever to adopting a child with special needs. We are praying about what that means for next time, but this is what I know: I want the child that God has for me, and I don't want to miss out because of fear. I am so excited to see where the Lord will take us next!