Hope Renewed

Thank you all so much for your sweet comments. I am so thankful to be a part of this online adoption community, it truly is wonderful "knowing" so many people who just get us. Adoption is so hard and I'm so glad we're not walking through it all alone.

Finding out the news about K was really, really hard. The day we found out, Joel stayed home from the office and I spent the morning crying.

But in the midst of our grief, we totally felt God's comfort and peace and in came in the form of our new friends. Joel went out to the little store around the corner in the morning to buy a few things and on the way back he ran into our friends. He told them the news and the husband gave him a big hug.

About an hour later our friends showed up at our house.They didn't call, they just came right over. I was so blessed. Although adoption is still kind of a foreign concept to them, they dropped everything and came to be with us because they knew we were sad. Turks just know it's not good to be alone when you're sad. Even though my face was all red and puffy from crying and I would have preferred not to have guests, it was good that they came, it really did help us take our minds off of things.

They stayed for a few hours and it was nice not having to worry about serving coffee, tea or snacks since it's Ramadan and our friends are fasting. The wife even invited her sister-in-law  (whom I barely know) to come over too, which I thought was kind of funny, but Turks just love to be together, so hey, what's one more!

Of course, Adam and Mel took care of us too - they brought us lunch and supper and hung out with us in the evening. Have I mentioned before that we are TOTALLY blessed to have family here?! They are the best! But it was just so cool for me to see our Turkish friends be there for us in our time of need. It encourages me to know that we really are making real friendships here!

Now, with all that being said I do have some good news to share!

That same evening, after we put the kids to bed, we called AAI to ask a few more questions and that's when we found out about Y (I can't write his full name yet). AAI said they were still trying to find families for some boys in the 4-6 age range and asked if we were ready to see another little boy's file. To be honest, I wasn't quite sure that my heart was ready, but Joel said we needed to look at his file. So we saw his pictures, read his file and knew that we needed to let this little boy into our hearts. Of course, we are still so sad about K and he will always have a very special place in our hearts (his picture is still all throughout our house and our kids continue to talk about him and want to pray for him), but we found out about another little boy needing a family and we are so excited that Y is going to be our son! He's about 5 years old and he's got the cutest smile you will ever see!

I'll admit, I'm still scared and feel like I have my heart a little guarded because of what happened with K. Adoption is just so hard, it really is such an emotional roller coaster ride! Boy, did I ever learn that this week!

But the other good news is that AAI told us we might even be able to keep the same court date that we had scheduled for K (October 8). We had already bought tickets and everything, so we're praying that we'll still be able to travel as scheduled!