Little Did We Know...

I have story for you today.  A crazy, I never could have dreamed this up, kind of story.
It begins in the summer of 2013, shortly after we had decided to adopt again.  The craziness of collecting mountains of paper work, updating our homestudy and getting everything submitted to our agency was just about complete.

On a lovely summer day, when Jeremy was out of town for a week for work, I got a phone call from our adoption agency.  There was an older girl they wondered if we would consider adopting. Her name was K.  Her age was outside of what our adoption parameters were and what our homestudy approved us for.  But homestudy's can be amended if need be.  Here was a child who needed a family. Could this be our daughter?

Over the following two weeks we prayed, received more info about K's history, talked with those close to us and AGONIZED over this decision.  In the end, we declined her referral.  No need to go into the reasons why, we just knew K was not our daughter.  She belonged to someone else's family.

At that time I remember very specifically wondering, "Why did God bring this little girl to our attention if we are not her family? What was the point of God putting her in our path?"  All I knew then was that I needed to pray for K and that I could pray for her by name and by her specific situation.

NOW, this is when the story gets good....

Later that fall (2013) I was reading adoption blogs and stumbled across a new one.  I noticed that this family was adopting through our same agency so I searched their blog a little bit more.  They were adopting a little girl that had been on our agency's waiting list.  There was only one girl that fit her description...it had to be K!  I was so excited to know that K had found a family!  I basically stalked this family on their blog and on Facebook.  We made contact, confirmed that they were indeed adopting K, and get this...THEY LIVE ONLY 30 MINUTES AWAY FROM US!!!

Our agency is based in Utah and works with families from all over the US.  K could have been adopted by anyone and anywhere in the US.  But she is living close to us!  Crazy!

But it gets even better...

Last summer K came home to her family.  I met her very briefly once and continued to occasionally  keep in contact with her mom, Betsy, through Facebook.  This past Nov. we accepted S's referral.  As we learned more about S's history, our agency sent us photos of her.  A couple of photo's were group pictures of children that had been at our agency's transition home.  I noticed that K was in the pictures with our daughter S.  Did they know each other???

I emailed the pictures to Betsy and had her ask K if she knew our daughter.  Not only did she know our daughter, the two of them had been GOOD FRIENDS! 

K was able to share anecdotal stories about S.  K let us know that the girls had been part of a threesome of friends.  K, our daughter S and another little girl who now lived in Tennessee with her family.  I was able to contact the family in TN and learn even more about our daughter and her friends.  This was an unbelievable gift to our family!  When you receive a referral for a child, you get the nuts and bolts information. Age (as best as they know), weight, height, how long they've been at the orphanage etc.  Now I was able to learn that my daughter and her two friends would stay up at night and giggle and talk and be shushed by the Nannies.  I learned she liked to sing and dance.  I learned that she did not like to be woken up early in the morning to get her picture taken (yes, there's a story behind that).  We were able to learn about S as a person.

Little did we know that when we learned about K in the summer of 2013 and wondered why she had been put in our path, she would have a direct connection to our daughter.  These two girls, who lost their families, ended up in an orphanage together in Ethiopia and became friends, will now live 30 minutes apart in the US.  They will be able to see each other, play together and hopefully support each other.

I don't usually like to give spiritual meaning to random events  but it seems to me that DIVINE INTERVENTION is written all over this story.