I
am still confident of this; I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of
the living. Wait for the Lord; Be strong
and take heart and wait for the Lord. Psalm 27:13-14
Today,
I am thankful for the “wait”. The wait
is what molded us, changed us and prepared us for just a time as this. Lily has been home 7 weeks today. 7 weeks ago I woke up for the first time with
both children under my roof. In the same
house, often times in the same bed.
There were so many mornings as soon as my eyes opened, my thoughts were
for my children and their comfort and safety.
For so long I could provide that for only one of them. I cannot even begin to describe the feeling
of waking up each morning stopping by Lily’s room and seeing her asleep in her
own bed. It often overwhelms me. I got my prayer journals out a few days ago, I
went back three years to see my journal entries on July 2nd 2012,
2013 and 2014 and I sat amazed at how the lord answered my prayers on those
days with July 2nd, 2015, the day she came home. I
was reading back over some old blog entries and the same thing hit me…I can’t
believe how perfectly God fit together Lily’s story and molded it with ours. How He answered every prayer. Sometimes it wasn’t how I thought, and often
times it came through pain, but it formed us into being exactly who Lily needs
right now. From the old friends who
continue to stand by us to the new friends we have met, to the doctors and
nurses he has specifically put into place for this little girl shows me just
how much He loves His children, and if we will just let Him take control of our
lives His plan really is much better.
I
have fallen in love with a child I didn’t birth, a child who has a different
heritage, a different back ground, who is a different color, but who is so
perfectly made for me and for our family.
It’s often crazy how much she is like the rest of us, but has her own
special unique qualities too. She loves
to love and loves being loved. She loves
new things and embraces life. She gives
kisses all the time and uses it strongly when she knows she is in trouble! She gives the best Haitian faces and points at
us like every other Haitian does when we visit Haiti. She loves to pray to Jesus and she is extremely
smart. My dad affectionately calls her
the Haitian hurricane and that name fits her!
She doesn’t let her disability slow her down and she remains strong and
determined. We often laugh at the
description we were first given of her…she is emotionally flat. We thought that for a while until our second
trip to Haiti. Over five trips we knew
she had a personality, she just kept it locked inside. Spend five minutes with her and you too will experience
the Haitian Hurricane and you too will fall in love. I was visiting a sweet friend who just
returned from Mexico the other night and her family reminded me how much they
felt like they already knew Lily, because they had been so much a part of her story. They do know her and they are part of her story. So many people are a part of her story. So many people walked with us, cried with us,
fought with us to get her home. She isn’t
fully adopted yet so her name remains the same as it is/was in Haiti. I thought that would bother me but it doesn’t. It’s who she is. She isn’t just a Dobson. I have learned that she
is a Ray, a Crowe, a Newman, a Pearson, a Stewart, a Crane, a Pfaff, an
Ortega-Higgs, a Williams, a Valley Creek kid, she is everyone’s child who
fought with us to get her home! Everyone
has a piece of her story. Everyone who
bought from us over a three year span of endless craft shows brought her
home. Everyone who lifted her up to our
Father brought her home. It wasn’t just
a Dobson journey it was a huge family of God’s children who brought her
home. And to you I am ever
grateful. Because my life has been
forever altered in ways I can’t even fathom yet.
I
still have plans to write about the last two trips that it took to bring her
home, because the Lord seriously moved some large mountains to make this
happen. When we landed the last time to
bring her home, we were told she wasn’t leaving. I had some pretty incredible friends who
prayed prayers that our Father heard, and a pretty incredible family that
opened their home in Haiti and fought along side us to get her home in less
than 48 hours. God moved some serious
mountains. But for now I want you to
know the very first story that locked our family together with Lily. Once again it was led by Anna Lee.
I
was shuffling through photos of kids from Haiti available for adoption early on
in our journey. I was shuffling through
all 5 of them. That was all that was
available at the time. Most were pretty
heavy special needs. When you start the
adoption process one of the first few things you are handed is a sheet of paper
with every issue, disease, disability known to man with a box beside it. You are supposed to mark what you are not
willing to accept, or mark what you are willing to accept, I can’t remember
which but the point is to tell them what kind of kiddo you are willing to
accept into your family. I remember
feeling like the worst human ever because I knew if I birthed a child it wouldn’t
matter but here I have an option to choose.
We had already voiced we could not handle a child in a wheel chair. Our lives were too busy, too crazy, to full
of responsibilities to take this type of disability on. My Father had other plans. He slowed us down, He removed most of my “responsibilities”
I thought I had and He opened our eyes to what really mattered. The child He had already chosen for our
family. Back to the scrolling photos….There
was a baby about 4 months old who caught my attention, but so did the
description next to her. Doctors say she
will never walk. I casually leaned over
my shoulder asked Anna Lee, who was 6 at the time, “What if your sister was in
a wheel chair?” Her response, “Well, we
get her a purple wheelchair, and we buy toys for the floor, like puzzles and
blocks. And I can take her outside and
wheel her around and then bring her in and we just play in the floor.” She went on to explain how this would all
work and had answers for everything. As
she was talking some scripture came to mind, “I tell you the truth, unless you
change and humble yourself like a child, you will never enter the kingdom of
heaven.” Matthew 18:3 and then it goes on to say in verse 5, “And whoever
welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes Me.” That verse wrecked me. That response wrecked me. I realized in that moment my six year old was
willing to take risks that I wasn’t even willing to take. That was in Jan…she asked Jesus into her
heart the following March. She was
willing to take risks because she knew it was right and I had been walking with
the Lord far longer than her and wasn’t willing to step out. I began praying for this little girl named
Lily. That the Lord would find her a
family and provide for her needs. I
prayed for her parents and her orphanage.
It took three weeks for the Lord to reveal to me I was her family and
she was my child. Standing in a youth
worship service the lord spoke, “She is your child and she will come home.” He told me that two more times over the next
month because I just wasn’t sure I heard right…I just wasn’t sure this was what
He was asking us to do…in reality looking back I was just scared. I clung to what He told me many times; many
times on the verge of giving up I remembered those words. It took Brad a lot longer. We talked, we prayed, we hashed out sceneries,
we tried to make sense of it. We couldn’t,
because it just didn’t. I finally told
him one day, “you are the head of this family, you will be the one that stands
before the Lord and answers for the decisions we made as this family.” He prayed some more. One Monday morning before he left for work he
stood in the living room of our old house, in front of the T.V. looked me in the
eyes and said, “She is our daughter, let’s go get her.”
If
it wasn’t for the faith of a child, our path might have looked a little
different. There have been so many cross
roads in this journey. Anna Lee has been
such a strong part of this journey. She is
so little, yet so big. There was one
moment after trip 3 (I think-they all run together) we came home, and I was exhausted. I was done.
I was ready to quit and throw in the towel. It was too hard, too dirty, and too
messy. I’ll never forget Anna Lee
hopping up on our kitchen table after gym, with her nasty chalky rear-end on my
table and telling me, “mom we fought this battle as a family. We have all grown, I have grown closer to the
Lord, and we are not giving up now. We
will keep going, keep fighting as a family.” Yes wise little 8 year old. And we did, we kept fighting.
The
most gratifying part of this journey has been watching Brad and Anna Lee bond
with Lily. She immediately took to
me. Every trip she was glued to me. She lies on my chest and examines my faces
and smiles and kisses and talks. It wasn’t
hard with me and her. It was almost instant
love. But watching the love between the
other three has been pretty incredible.
Watching two totally different children fall in love with each other and
love like sisters yet fight like sisters has been pretty cool. Watching Brad bathe her, and take care of her
the only way nannies have done for the past three years and watching her guard
come down has been incredible. Watching her
laugh at him when he does daddy things like “pull my finger” and takes her out for stroller rides in the afternoons and eating pop cycles on the couch like dad’s do,
has been pretty incredible. It’s a daily
walk of discovering new things with each other, and discovering each
other. I have enjoyed watching her with
our friends and family. Our friends who
have jumped on our crazy train and even traveled with us to Haiti have fallen
in love with her and her with them. Her
grandparents have fallen in love with her, and she with them. She has a unique relationship with each of
them. Our journey hasn’t been normal
from the start and neither has her homecoming.
But it has been unique to us and it was the plan God picked and for that
I sit in awe of Him each day.
There
are hard days and there are unknowns, but one thing I have learned is this. “I am
still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the
living. I will wait for the Lord, I will
be strong and I will take heart and I will wait for the Lord.”
And
we don’t care if she ever really walks. And we don’t care if she ever really
becomes a Dobson…she already is on our hearts, as long as she becomes a child
of the King nothing else really matters.
