Surprise Blessings

You know, the longer we wait to meet our children, the more blessings God seems to pour into our lives.  Last night I went out to a birthday dinner with a group of ladies and ended up sitting next to a dear soul whom I had met shortly after we decided to adopt (over 3 years ago).  At that time she was waiting to adopt her daughter from China and we connected because of our mutual desire to become parents to far away children who needed our love.  Her daughter has been home with her for over a year and a half now and is a beautiful girl with a beautiful mother and a beautiful story!  Accross from me at the same table sat another woman touched by adoption AND by Brazil.  She worked teaching English in Northern Brazil for a year and spoke so lovingly about her three daughters, two of whom she had adopted.  And as if that weren't enough, right accross the table was another woman who spent time living all around South and Central America, and also has a heart for adoption.  She is a native English Speaker, raising a bilingual daughter with her Argentine husband.

Before I left to go downtown for this dinner, I was really feeling down in the dumps... at the bottom of a doozy of a loop on the emotional rollercoaster on which I seem to be living these days.  I called my dear husband and told him that I just wanted to stay home with the covers pulled over my head.  But that dear husband of mine encouraged me to go, knowing that it would lift me up.  And it did.  I caught myself thinking, "If we'd already left for Brazil, I would have missed meeting these amazing women."

It's impossible to know what else we need to learn, understand, experience, hear or become before we finally meet our children (and oh, how we long to meet them!), but every time a gem like this one pops up, it reminds me that I really can't know what the future will hold... what blessings or what surprises.  I just know that the big reveal will be well worth the wait, and I imagine it will erase most of it too.