Goals

You guys. If you've EVER even THOUGHT about meeting me, you know I'm what some may call "goal oriented". You'd also know that I'm very determined when it comes to meeting these goals and many of you have to slow me down and remind me that people have feelings and that it's ok to meet a goal in a casual manner, in a fun way. You may also know that I h.a.t.e./loathe/despise asking people for money.

The adoption journey tends to combine these two opposing forces. Dagnabit.

Our journey to Michael will end up costing about $30,000. We've paid about $20,000 from our own funds. And you guys, that was all God leading and providing for our finances over the past 4+ years. I can assure you we didn't just have $20,000 sitting around and were like "hey what do you want to do with all this money? I don't know. Adopt? Hey why not!" Both of us switching jobs near the beginning of this journey and actually making LESS money per year may have also seemed like an odd decision. There is more to that story, but that's for another day, another blog post. We needed help with the last $10,000. Rats. This meant I had to ask for help. And for money. My life is so hard, right?

We filled out more forms, more applications to apply for grants (secretly I like filling out forms and applications so this part was  not a burden...). We received two of the three grants we applied for and, for a variety of reasons, decided to only accept one of them.

Twenty two of you gave to Hand in Hand. You gave $4,100 and Hand in Hand matched $2,500 giving us a total of $6,600. WOWZA! This will take care of our airfare (heads up: no one at the airlines thinks it's neat you're adopting and offers free tickets)!

My friend Stephanie (we used to work together, but have both moved on to new adventures) contacted me and said "I sell Silpada jewelry, let me hold a sale for you and donate my  proceeds." Me, "What? Oh, but I couldn't!" Stephanie: "I'm doing this for you." An obvious paraphrase of our conversation, but she gave her time and talents to organize a fund raiser - it was such a huge help to us and she took it and ran with it at a time when I was feeling bogged down by so many other things. Stephanie - THANK YOU! So many of our friends look even more beautiful with their new jewelry...and we narrowly missed ruining one Christmas gift of someone who bought a piece of jewelry for his wife when we sent the thank you card. Luckily it was intercepted. Whew.

So many of you were just like "Hey we want to help, here's a check." You guys. For real. I get all weird in those situations because I missed the class on how to show emotions, so I get all choked up on the inside and then usually just make a joke or say something awkward and never actually say thank you in the moment and tell you how much you mean to us.

Our local Holy Yoga community came together and donated $655 to our family to help with this journey. It has been so great getting to know these women over the past year and hearing their stories, absorbing their advice, and sharing laughter and love has been incredibly encouraging to me. It's amazing how many adoption stories people have to share!

All that to say our goal was $10,000 and YOU helped us raise $10,125 in roughly three months.

We. Are. Blown. Away.

Why? I have no idea. It's not like we didn't KNOW you guys were awesome. That you loved us. That you were walking alongside of us. But when you see love in action, it's carries a huge weight to it, doesn't it? Words can get lost sometimes in life, but giving sacrificially of yourself, interrupting who you are, what you do, to give to us, to love us - that speaks volumes.

These are the stories I want to whisper to Michael in our quiet moments. How he was loved by so many before he was born. How he was loved by his  people when all we had was a picture of him to oooh and ahhh over. How God has been providing for him, for us, this entire time. That God has been writing his story - Michael may be frustrated by parts of his story, not understand the "why" of parts of his story, but it's a story that includes all of you. For that we will be forever thankful. You are loved. Not just by us, one day by Michael, but by God, who is writing your story too. Settle in and give it a read sometime. You might find you like it and want to dig in deeper.