It's a Match!!!

So before I started typing out this post I re-read my last post. First, I thought how ironic that this would be the post that follows, and then when I read the words, "and here we are 3 and a half years later wondering when that call will come" I got chills.

THAT CALL HAS COME!!!

Our family received the best, most exciting Christmas present the day after Christmas. I've read countless adoption blogs about how when the phone rang or they saw their case workers name on the caller ID, they just knew. And that was totally the case. The phone rang late in the afternoon. We were all literally just hanging around in the living room and dining room, playing, reading, snacking because that's what you do on Christmas break :), and when I glanced at the caller ID and saw the name of our case worker you wouldn't believe the feelings and thoughts and considerations that flew through my head in, I'm not kidding, a matter of five seconds. "It's the day after Christmas. We just finished updating all of our paperwork again so I shouldn't be hearing from her for months. This is it. It has to be. Why else would she be calling? In three and a half years she's never just called to say Merry Christmas." I did pick up the phone and sure enough she handed us the gift of an end to our wait.

We've been matched with a two year old girl (just FOUR months older than our Tobias) from Poland. Wait? What? Yep. Not Bulgaria. Not much more I can say about that except our God, He is a creative One. For days, our boys were telling us "but we've been praying for Bulgaria! Not Poland!" And I would laugh at their expressions because I wasn't sure if they're minds were just blown and confused at the thought of a whole other country that they don't know and can't readily place on a map or if they were afraid that they're new sister missed out on all those prayers! But it was pretty fun to talk about  how this was not a surprise to God as it was to us. This was His plan all along, to re-route us a bit to the north and a bit to the west. But every one of those prayers was laid upon the heart of the little girl invited into our family...from Poland.

She actually came across our radar three weeks prior. Our case worker sent out a mass email about her with a few pictures. I saw her and immediately thought, "Oh my goodness. She's adorable." And the more I read about her I knew they would find a forever family for her right away. Plus, there was the whole thing with her being from Poland. But still I wanted to know what Brad thought because I knew he had probably checked his email at work and saw her and read about her. So when he came home that night I asked him if he'd seen her picture and he had, and we talked about her shortly, figuring there was no sense pursuing a child that wasn't even from Bulgaria. And we were right. A couple of days later, our case worker sent out a followup email stating that the inquiries could stop and that they had already found a family for her in the two days from her first email. Figured.

Fast forward to December 26th....and the phone call, and our YES, and the rest seems surreal. The family she was matched with was declined by Poland for reasons that seemed insignificant to me but then the more I thought about it, the more obvious it was that, well, God had intentioned her for us! We weren't even one of the families that inquired about her and yet as I was speaking to my case worker that night she said we were one of the first families she thought of to call. A few weeks prior, she had to stop the inquiries and yet she called us. Yes indeed, God had intentioned her for us.

So now we are knee deep in paperwork and phone calls once again, updating everything so that it says Poland. But we're also knee deep in lots of other things, like dreaming of when we can finally be with her, that first smile when we see her, that first hug, hoping that she is home or that we're there with her for her third birthday in June. It's amazing how close she feels to us now having a face and a name. It's hard to believe we're still an ocean apart. And it's amazing the fire that is lit under you when you're making phone calls and filling out paperwork and running and speaking to every government agency you can name when there's a little person on the other end of all that paperwork waiting.

So it's off to Poland we go. Hang on tight, little girl, your family's coming for you.