Something about this particular little one stayed with me over the months. Even though the door was closed, I couldn’t shake her and quietly kept her in my heart, praying for her and wondering if she’d ever found a family.
On a Monday morning a few weeks ago, The Driver and I discussed our thoughts about changing to another country in EE for our adoption and he left for a staff retreat with intentions to pray specifically about this issue.
Late Tuesday night, as I closed down the computer for the night, I made an impulse decision to check into Twitter. I hadn’t been on Twitter for about two months and I’m still not really sure why I decided to check in to the Twitter world,
but that one decision changed my life.
As I glanced over my Twitter feed, I didn’t focus in on a whole lot, but one tweet in particular stood out to me. I have gone back and looked for this tweet, but have been unable to find it. I’m not even sure who it was that tweeted this, but I remember it saying something like this, “Maybe YOU can be the one to change the life of this little girl.” It had a link to a blog attached so I clicked it.
The image that came up at the end of that link was her—my daughter-to-be still needed a family. She had grown up a bit, but I instantly knew it was her. They had changed her name for privacy, but I knew it was her. Thinking that maybe I had lost my mind, I backtracked to where I knew her info was on her orphanage’s website—in Cyrillic, mind you. I translated the pages, navigating as I went along and…there she was…correct name and all!
Needless to say, I did not sleep very well that night, tossing and turning, trying to decide what to do. I knew she was my daughter, but how was I to conquer the mountainous law that stood in my way? As I prayed through the night, the scripture came to mind in Matthew 17:
“If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
By the time I got up in the morning, I knew what I had to do. I needed to begin asking questions and “pushing” those mountains. I also knew I needed to put into practice what the Lord had been teaching me about over the previous few months. So I asked a few friends to join me in fasting and praying while I began calling and emailing everyone I knew might be able to help.
I knew that asking for a waiver or something of that sort was like asking for the moon in her country, but the Mama Bear in me had to try. Shockingly to me, I did not meet resistance. What I found instead was an attitude that said “It’s not common, but it’s not unheard of—we can ask.” The mountains were beginning to move.
(Another part of the unfolding will be posted tomorrow…)
