What Now?

Life right now is a weird mixture of really happy...

...playing in the yard with my beautiful kids.

...enjoying this wonderful house and the backyard.

...sunny days, time with family, laughter.

And this happiness is mixed with such sadness...

...losing Seth and knowing we will never hold him here in this life.

...letting go of hopes and dreams we had for the future.

...comforting children who are also grieving and trying to understand.

As the days flow from one into the next, God's peace has also flowed into our hearts.  This doesn't mean the pain has magically disappeared.  It doesn't mean that we are happy about all that has happened.  It doesn't mean we are all healed and all better.  But little by little, God's promises have become stronger than the questions.  His grace has surrounded us and His comfort has come to our hearts.

We can trust Him.  Even in this, even when life does not go how we hope or expect, we can trust Him.  This has not changed who He is, who we know Him to be.  His compassion never fails.

The question we have been faced with over the last few weeks has been, "What now?"

We look around at this big, beautiful home that we moved to specifically so that we could adopt Seth.  We look at the money that we've saved and all that was donated for the adoption.  We look at our completed home study and all the paperwork we have done and we wonder...what now?  What was this all for and what should we do now?

Our hearts have been broken for the thousands of children who wait for families.  We knew, with certainty, after Seth died, that we would move forward to adopt another child.  At first, even saying it out loud brought many, many tears.

"I just wanted Seth.  I just wanted him."

As the days went on and we talked and prayed, we felt even more certain there was another little one who would come home to our family.  Boys wait longer - we looked for a boy.  Older boys wait much longer - we thought about older boys.  We prayed and thought about our family and the ages of our kids and then one day...there he was.  A video of a little boy named Robbie grabbed both our hearts.  We just sat, watching and smiling as he talked away in Chinese (and a little English), counted (to 200 I think!), and sang his little heart out.  He was adorable, funny, smart, and full of spunk!

We have started the process to bring this precious boy into our family and we are just so excited!  Mixed with a whole lot of complicated feelings about Seth, the sadness, the questions.  I'm not going to lie - it's hard.  But we choose love.  We choose to be open to love again and we choose to trust that God can bring beauty from ashes.

Robbie is 6 years old and lives at the same place Seth spent the last week of his life.  It is an amazing home for blind children and we are so grateful for the love and care he is receiving there.  Robbie is blind in one eye and has very low vision in his other eye.  The boys are really excited about having another brother.  Hannah has struggled to think about bringing home someone who is not Seth.  Livvy is pretty much oblivious :)

We are thankful for all the Lord is doing in our lives and how He continues to draw us closer, in joy and in pain.  He is faithful and we look forward to the next part of this journey.