MY "BIRTH" STORY

I've been so excited to share this, but couldn't until we passed court. It starts on the morning of December 1st... about 7 months ago. I woke up and felt my insides aching and remembered a dream I had that night. I woke Aaron up and told him all about how I dreamt Arthur was born. It was honestly kind of strange... the way dreams usually are, but I couldn't help but wonder if Arthur actually was born that day all the way across the world!

When I got to work I told our social worker all about it on gchat. She said "Oh my gosh, Heather! It's totally possible that he was born today! I've heard of that happening a lot! You should write it down!" So, I did. I wrote it down right here on this blog.

A couple months later things got kind of crazy with the news that Ethiopia would cut inter-country adoptions by 90 percent! This news was heartbreaking! I pushed through and tried to stay positive, and really made myself crazy trying to figure out what God was doing through all of this. It just didn't make sense to me. I remembered the dream I had and decided to look on the Waiting Child List. (a list of mostly healthy children who are a little older and are waiting to be adopted). I thought... I wonder if there's a boy on the list with the December 1st birthday. I mean... what are the chances? There were only about 20 kids on the list at the time. As I scrolled down I felt the chills run across my skin as I saw a boy, born on December 1st! He was so beautiful, he seemed to have such a sweet spirit... he was TEN!

"Ten?! Hmm... I just don't know about that. Aaron's going to think that I'm nuts!" I felt nuts, but when I told Aaron about it, I was kind of surprised by his response. He, too felt that the birthday was significant and thought it was something we needed to pay attention to. He said "I just don't feel right saying, 'Yes, Lord we want to care for orphans, but not a ten-year-old,' Let's pray about it." So, we prayed about it. We asked our family to pray about it. I kept remembering things I had learned from an adoption conference I had attended a few months before. Learning more about orphan care actually created a lot of doubt in my mind about our decision to adopt a baby internationally. And the news of the slow down made me fear we were just adding to the "baby business".

We eventually decided that this little ten-year-old was not our child. Which was kind of tough for me. I had been staring at his photo and daydreaming about our family. I just felt connected to him because of that birthday! Pretty soon after that, things started picking up and referrals started pouring in! I started to get excited again about a baby. The baby God had for us.

Within a couple weeks we had moved all the way up on the wait list and Ashley (our consultant) called us with the news of our son! She had both of us on the line...

ASHLEY: "Ok guys, are you ready to hear about your son?"

AARON: "Yes!"

ME: "I think so..."

ASHLEY: "Ok, I'm probably going to mess up his name. I haven't heard this name before. His name is Fuad Amina"

AARON: "ok..."

ME: an echoing, "ok..."

ASHLEY: "He was born on December 1st... Heather, are you still breathing?" (She knew about the dream too)

ME: "OH MY GOSH!"

AARON: an echoing, "OH MY GOSH!"

The rest of the conversation was such a blur! I just felt paralyzed by the power of what the Lord had done. So overwhelmed by how big He is!! I mean, I felt my son being born all the way across the world! What a beautiful gift for us. For me. For Arthur. All of my doubts and insecurities vanished that day. This is our son!