9 Months

9 months ago today I saw this face

on my friend Mandy's facebook wall. 

And, I can't explain it but I felt my heart move.

I messaged my friend back and forth until she suggested that I message the Social Worker with the agency who had his file. 

I felt a little crazy, a little foolish, I mean my husband was still saying, "No, you're crazy," pretty much every time I brought up the idea of adoption. 

So I prayed and I sent the email that started off like this (copied from actual email):

"Hi, my name is Brooke Kirk and I'm friends with Mandy and Marty Rhodes. Mandy posted about a little boy named Ian this morning and he has really been pulling on my heart. I kept asking her questions about him and she suggested I email you to get more information. My husband and are not homestudy approved and to be honest my husband is still on the fence about international adoption. But, I'm praying that having some information to go to him with might sway his heart."

Thankfully, she looked past the crazy and sent me his file.

A handful of photographs and 3 and half pages of information later I knew he was our's.

I'll be honest the next 4 days were hard in our house.

This is the email I sent on January 7th at 10:50 PM (My 32nd birthday by the way)

"I just wanted to touch base to make sure Ian was still available. Over the weekend God has convicted me that he is our son. I am just waiting for my husband's head to catch up to his heart and give the costs of adoption over to God, and, I really feel like we're almost to that point.

Thank you so much."

She messaged me back that he was.

And the next night I sent this:

"We want to commit to Ian! Please let me know what our next steps need to be. I think we know what homestudy agency we will be using. Thank you for all of your help! God Bless!"

Of course there's a lot more to the story, some of which I covered here as best I could.

We're on a journey that I thought we might find ourselves on one day, but, never expected to be on right now. I am thankful, humbled, blessed beyond measure.

The journey so far has been so much more than I could ever have imagined, both good and bad.

People keep asking how it's going. Right now we're waiting but we're moving if that makes sense. We're waiting on I800A approval which comes from USCIS (not affected by the government shutdown thankfully). It is the last piece of our dossier that we need. Once it is in our hands we will send it, along with a few other documents, off to be apostilled and then they'll join our homestudy and other documents in Bulgaria to make up the dossier that will be submitted. Once our dossier is submitted and approved we will be invited to travel. Could we still travel this year? I won't take any thing away from God, but at this point it really would be a miracle if we go on first trip this year though I haven't given up hope yet of a December travel date. Realistically I'm hoping that we at least have travel dates by December for January.

Please continue to pray for God's favor over our process. Please pray for our son's heart, that he is prepared for the change that is coming to his life and that God will prepare him for our family and our family for him.

Thank you all for the love and support you continue to lavish upon us and our boy <3

Love ~ Steve, Brooke and Nicholas

(Sorry this is from Easter, we're going to have family pictures done soon!)