Remembering Referral Day

Last week we celebrated a year from the day we received our referral for Megan. I was overcome remembering the joy that I felt when we got "the call" from our precious family coordinator. It's one of the most incredible and special memories of my life--very much like the births of my three biological children. We had many emails from other families who received referrals the same day, and they were reminiscing about exactly what they were doing the moment that they heard about their new babies. It was such a wonderful day for all of us!

We first laid eyes on our beautiful Megan the very next morning after the Fed-Ex man delivered our referral packet. Although she was already 9 months old at the time, the only pictures we received had been taken when Megan was about 4 months old. Oh, how we treasured those pictures! We read her profile over and over again and put copies of her pictures all over the house. We carried copies with us and gave copies away. We asked everyone we knew to be praying for her. We loved her so much and clung to all that we had of her. We prayed constantly for her and longed so much to have her with us.

Today we are a very busy family of six. Megan is a beautiful, happy, healthy 21 month old, and we are constantly reminded of how very blessed we are to have her. We often forget that she hasn't always been ours--that we had to painfully wait to hold her and be her family. We forget that God placed others in her life to care for her until we could. We forget that she has another mommy and daddy in China who risked a great deal for Megan and who lost a precious treasure in the process. But we never forget how much we love our sweet little girl and that we are blessed beyond measure to have this treasure as our daughter.

In His Grip...