"His sixth great grandchild"


For months now we have anticipate a life changing, middle of the night phone call.  At 2:00 Sunday morning we got a phone call that was just that.  This phone call was not at all the one we were hoping for, but instead one of those dreaded, although somewhat anticipated calls.  My Papa (grandfather on my mother's side) had gone to be with the Lord.


He had been battling cancer for awhile now and had suffered pretty significantly.  For that reason his death was somewhat of a relief.  None of us want our loved ones to suffer, especially when the alternative is eternal life pain and worry free with our Creator and Savior.


As I have tried to process this new reality over the last day or so, my thoughts keep creeping back to the last time I saw him.  It was back in May at my cousins wedding.  It was a beautiful evening, almost magical you might say.  The wedding was gorgeous and the reception was so beautifully done.  It was so much fun having most of the family together.  It had been such a long time since so many of us had been in one place.  I kept watching Papa as each of his kids, grandkids, and great grandkids interacted with him throughout the evening.  He would light up for each of us and proudly posed for numerous photos.  He was so happy just to have all of us so close.  As it came close to time for him to leave, I hugged him and whispered in his ear that he was going to be getting another great grandchild in August and went on to tell him all about our, since failed, private adoption plan.  He hugged me so tightly, and as tears streamed down his face he told me that he loved me so much and that he was so happy that he was going to have another great grandbaby. 


As I mentioned earlier in the post, I have mostly felt grateful that Papa is no longer in pain.  This afternoon, though, as I was reading my aunt's facebook post about his funeral arrangements and his obituary that gratitude briefly flipped to selfish grief.  As I was reading the "survived by" part of his obituary, uncontrollable tears began to stream down my face.  It said after the named list of children, " 9 grandchildren and 5 great grandchildren."  That is all he will have ever known even though number 6 is so close.  My child will never know him.  I will never get to see his face light up as he holds him or her.  I suppose this is even harder for me to process this week as two of our "almost babies" were due to be born this week.  We had thought for so long that this would be the week we would be getting our middle of the night call, just not this one.


To my Papa,  I love you so much too!  I will miss your tight hugs and your sweet, whispery, "I love yous."  I promise to tell your number 6 how much you would've loved him or her.  He/she will not know you, but they will know about you.  You lived a long, full, and at times hard life, but now it is time for you to find peace and rest.


To all of my readers, I thank you as always for your interest in our story.  I ask that you keep us in your prayers especially this week.  This is a hard week for us, but I know that we will get through just as we always do, by the grace of God.  It encourages me to know that each passing day brings us one day closer to holding our long anticipated child tightly in our arms.

"Minus One"

First of all, I just want to say thank you to all of you who have been following our story and praying for us, as well as those of you who have contributed financially.  We love and appreciate each of you, and we are so grateful to have you as part of our story!

Next, I feel the need to share a little more of our back story to let you all see a little deeper into our hearts.  As many of you know, I have wanted to be wife and a mother pretty much since I was able to say those words. ;)  My other desire for my life has been for God to use it, however, wherever...whenever.  I have felt for a long time that adoption would be part of how He would accomplish this.  When I met Ron, he had felt a similar calling, and I believe that our similar hearts for orphans was one of the many things that drew us to each other.  We had agreed before we ever married, that adoption for us was not a question of "if" we would, but of "when" we would.  We thought the "when" would be after we had a biological child or two, but then came that scary, heart wrenching road block...infertility.  How could I possibly not be able to have children?  I, who was born to be a mother.  I, who had had all of my six children named by the time I was 13!  How could this possibly be?  For years I was absolutely paralyzed by this inconceivable reality.  I put on my biggest, most convincing smile as  went to baby shower after baby shower of not only friends my age, but ones much younger.  Eventually, it was children I had babysat who were having babies.  I would smile, and comment on the cuteness of the numerous babies, as I was genuinely happy for all of my friends, family and acquaintances, but when I would get alone... I would cry my heart out and try to understand the why in my circumstances.  I  was so desperate to see what God's purpose could possibly be in this.  After years of wrestling inside of myself with this, I finally got it.  There is a reason for this...or at least one that helps me to find some peace in this situation.  Adoption...it was always more of a plan B for us.   It was something we always planned on doing, but we had a plan about where it would fit into our lives.  We wanted to be obedient, but on our terms.  To God, this was not our plan B, but instead a very important part of His plan A our lives.  Once we finally figured this out, that was the end of our infertility discussions with doctors and the end of putting so much pressure ourselves to make something happen that was never meant to be. 

There are so many children in this world without someone to love and protect them; over 143 million orphans, to be exact.  There are babies born on a daily basis who are exposed to drugs and poverty or are born with disabilities.  They are labeled "unwanted" or "undesirable" before they even have the chance to show their worth.  They have no one to dream for them, or fight for them. They have no voice.  When I think of these children, I think of myself and so many of us who have such ugliness in our hearts and were completely lost and could be considered basically worthless.  We would have remained this way had God not stepped in.  He gave us unconditional love when we were utterly unlovable.  He saw potential in each of us and chose to invest in us so that we could have abundant life and eternal life.  How could we possibly live the love of God any better than opening our hearts and our home to the least of these.  What a humbling responsibility and calling...and this is exactly how we see it, our calling.  For every healthy Caucasian baby placed for adoption, there are 400 waiting couples.  That is definitely not the case for a baby exposed to drugs or even of an ethnicity considered to be a minority.  Those are the ones  that we feel called to bring into our lives, and by doing this we will be able to change that daunting number of world-wide orphans.  It will now be 143 million "minus one." 

Each of you by supporting us whether prayerfully or financially are helping us to make that number "minus one."  This is a phrase that you'll all be seeing a lot of as we head into our fundraising phase of this process.  We want each of you to realize that what you are being a part of is more than just growing a family; you are helping give hope and God's love to a child who otherwise might go through life feeling unloved or unwanted.  What a beautiful part of our child's life you already are. 

We will be kicking off several fundraisers over the next couple of weeks so stay tuned.  Some up coming things to look for include "minus one" t-shirts, handmade "minus one" refrigerator magnets,  and a huge benefit yard sale ( please contact me or Ron if you have items you would like to donate) just to name a few.

Once again, thank you to each of you who have been following our story.  We greatly appreciate each of you.

Also, just to give you a quick update...we have applied to several other agencies this week.  We are excited to see which doors God will swing wide open for us!  Love to you all! Thanks for reading...I know this was a long one. ;)

"Just keep swimming."

It's  interesting how quotes from cartoons keep popping into my head throughout this process.  Today's most relevant one is "just keep swimming," a quote from Disney's much loved "Finding Nemo."  I'll ellaborate on this more in a moment, but for now, excuse me while I  do a little mixing of my metaphors. We are quickly learning that adoption is an unpredictable rollercoaster.  You go from waiting in the long line to being jerked through the many sharp twists and turns. There are super high points where you're excitement builds to the point that you think you could literally jump out of your skin just to be quickly thrust to the lowest point of the ride.  Today we plunged down from one of our highest peaks so far.  It is odd how a situation can be so full of potential at one moment, like you are standing face to face with that beautiful thing that you have dreamt of your whole life, and with one phone call the dream shrinks to a tiny single speck of glitter.  It is still beautiful.  It is still right there, and technically it is still possible for it to be yours...but not very likely.
So this is where, " just keep swimming" comes back into the picture.  In those moments when you feel so tired and like you have come way to far to have just been pushed back to the beginning...in those  moments if you stop swimming...you will sink, and you won't ever make it to your goal.  So, here is what you do...you take a few seconds to have a pity party and feel sorry for yourself that this is happening AGAIN, you cry a tear or two if you must (but you try really hard not to since you came home from work early today with a migraine and crying is the last thing you need to do for that), and then you get the next round of profile books and agency applications ready to send out tomorrow, and you "JUST KEEP SWIMMING"!

"Make it pink. Make it blue."

“Make it pink.  Make it blue.”

I’m sure many of you are familiar with Disney’s Sleeping Beauty.  There is a reoccurring scene in the cartoon where two fairies are fighting over what color Sleeping Beauty’s dress should be.  One would zap her with her wand yelling, “Make it pink!”  Then the other fairy zaps Sleeping Beauty with her wand and proclaims, “Make it blue!”  I have thought of those scenes repeatedly over the last few months as our possible matches have seemed to alternate girl, then boy, then girl and so on.  Being the visual person that I am it is almost as though there is a wallpaper sort of background in my mind whenever I think of each child, and so the wallpaper constantly changes from pink to blue and back again.  I am glad though, that it will not be fairies that determine which child, whether in pink or in blue, will be ours forever.  There is definitely comfort in knowing that God knows who, when, and from where he or she will come.  In the meanwhile, each possibility that comes along serves to reignite our hope that our child is coming to us very soon.

We appreciate how faithfully so many of you have prayed for God to lead us to our child and that He would provide the means by which to bring this child home.  We know absolutely that we serve a God who hears our prayers and who is intimately familiar with the desires of our hearts.  We deeply appreciate your intercession on our behalf.  We would also ask that you be praying for the birth parents of our child.  That this might be the circumstance that brings them close to God and that He will give them strength, and grace to make the hard but best and most selfless decision for their child.  Also please pray that He would comfort and heal them as they move forward from that decision.  It breaks my heart that the best day of my life will be the worst day in our child’s birth parents lives.  

We would also like to thank each of you who have made financial contributions to our journey.  We greatly appreciate your gracious and giving spirit.  As a side note, there seems to be some confusion surrounding our donation site.  Some of you have noticed that the account in to which donations are made is under the name Jeffery Sizemore.  This has left some of you thinking you made a wrong turn somewhere.  I assure you that you are in the right place.  Ron and I have applied for several adoption matching grants where a certain organization would match donations made on our behalf.  One stipulation most of these grants have is that none of the money being matched can come from recipients’ account.  In order to have the option of transferring  your donations to a matching account, should we be awarded one, my best friend Kimberly and her husband offered to accept your donations into their account.  Upon receiving a matching grant, Kimberly and her husband will write a check for the total amount of your donations to the organization offering the grant and they will double it.  In the event we are not awarded any matching grants they will write the check directly to our adoption agency.  Thank you all so much for your interest and participation in our adoption story.  We cannot wait to be able to introduce our new addition to each of you.