A Little Hope Along the Way

We were recently at a wedding and struck up a conversation with the couple, complete strangers, sitting next to us.  They had the college aged son with them.  We chatted a bit and it came up that we were a waiting adoptive family.  I'm not really surprised that it came up since I usually fit it into every conversation I can.  You just never know.  Anyway, that nice college aged son they had with him, they adopted him.  Through LSS.  How do you like them apples!?

An Adoption Story

We heard another uplifting family building story from a volunteer.  Soon after being at a Resolve conference, someone contacted her to see if her family would be interested in adoption.  That wasn't on their radar at the time, they had other "plans" of how to build their family, but they decided to follow up on the lead.  The contact connected her to a potential adoptive situation in another state, and sure enough, the situation worked out.  She commented that the minute she had her baby in her arms, she let go of the dream of being pregnant, and never had the desire to be pregnant again.  They have a great open adoption situation, and she said she couldn't imagine life any other way. I love happy endings. She encouraged us to tell everyone we know that we want to adopt, because you never know when a situation could arise.  Pretty soon I'll be at the gas station telling the people pumping gas next to me that we'd hoping to adopt.  Great.

A Treadmill with a Side of Hope

This past Saturday, the three of us went to the Twin Cities for the day.  Our first stop was to check out a treadmill on Craig's List.  After trying it out, we walked outside and the woman selling the treadmill said to me, "You mentioned that you two are adopting, I'm adopted."  Wow.  (Yep, we do tell EVERYONE!) We had a great talk and she told us that her older brother is biological, she said that when they'd get into fights when they were kids, she'd tell him, "They (their parents) HAD to have you, they PICKED me!"  I got a kick out of that since I had just heard a similar story secondhand from another friend.  It helped me to see that our adopted child/red will see that although their birth story and arrival to our family is different than Griffin's, it's very, very special!

When we came back at night to pick up the treadmill, the woman told me that she called her mom after talking to me and told her our story.  She said that they've added us to their prayer list.  It's amazing how God continues to lead us to stories of hope to help us during this journey.

As a side note, as soon as we got into the basement where the treadmill was, Griffin ran up to a cool R2D2 toy.  After playing with it for a few minutes, the boy that owned the toy told Griffin he could keep it!  R2's batteries were missing, so we weren't sure what he could do, but regardless, Griffin loved him!  When we put batteries in him the next day, he started talking, "walking" and responding to commands.  He's Griffin's new buddy, and we feel that it's held off us adopting a dog for at least another 6 months!