Day 414 - Part 1

Hello, my name is Melissa. I am a bad blogger. Please forgive me for leaving you hanging. A lot has happened since January 7. I’ll do my best to recount everything.

As I referenced in the last post, we did get a call about a situation on December 25th. If you’ll recall our case manager told us not to expect to hear from her until after Christmas. So, throughout Christmas, I wasn’t as “attached” to my phone as I have been the past several months. In fact, I even turned it off for awhile…on the 25th. We left my parents’ house after lunch on the 25th to go and spend a couple of days with Matt’s parents. Once we arrived at Matt’s parents, I turned off my phone (I don’t get the greatest coverage there, so my battery drains down pretty quickly). We spent the afternoon and evening playing games and enjoying family time. Late in the day, I turned my phone back on and had a message from our case manager. In short, she had a birth mother in labor that she thought we’d match well with…she had tried to call us earlier, but couldn’t reach us. So, she called another waiting family, and they were considering the situation. My heart sank – why did I turn off my phone? However, I would soon learn the Lord knew why. After the baby was born, the folks who had received the first call changed their minds, so the social worker called us back on December 27th to see if we were interested. Due to some health concerns with the newborn, we decided to pass on the situation – that was very hard! However, I followed up with the case worker over the next week and found out that the first folks that were called did indeed decide to adopt the child! What an answered prayer – we were very concerned about what was going to happen to this precious baby. While we knew it wasn’t the situation for us, we desired for that precious baby to be placed into the right family.

Another agency called on New Year’s Eve! A birth mother was set to deliver on January 5th. After hearing the specifics of this situation, we felt this was not the situation for us either. Both of those situations would have had a quick turnaround – as in, we would have left immediately to fly to make it in time for the births. I began to wonder if the Lord was trying to tell us something. At that time, we didn’t have the nursery painted or any of the bedding ready (not that you need that to bring home a baby to, but we just hadn’t made much progress in the nursery lately). Those phone calls jolted us into action! The nursery was painted within two weeks, and the bedding was taken care of as well.

Remember the situation we got called about on December 16th? Well, we were actually called again about that situation again the second week of January! The birth mother wanted to talk with us. A whole new set of emotions – we were going to get to talk with a birth mother. We prayerfully prepared for the conversation and had a great conversation with her. After the initial conversation, we were definitely interested and were ready to move forward and talk with her again. Except, we never heard from her again. The social worker tried and tried to reach her – even the Director of the adoption agency tried. No luck at all. Her due date came and went – I held onto hope we might hear from her around then. Nothing. To this day, we don’t know what happened. I catch myself wondering about that precious baby quite often.

That’s all for right now! Thank you for your continued prayers and encouragement!