Some Fun "Coincidences"

The wait to clear embassy has been pretty excruciating.  Like all parts of this adoption it has been a roller coaster of ups and downs.  Thank goodness these six weeks have also been insanely busy and I have not had a lot of free time to agonize over the wait. 

I distinctly remember after we passed court thinking to myself, "Thank goodness, he's ours, maybe now I can dial down the crazy.  What, am I kidding myself, this child is now mine and I have to leave him on another continent!  No, the girls have been endured enough of crazy me, it's time to just deal."  So, as we wait, I truly have been trying to dial down the crazy, be in the moment with my girls, and just trust in the Lord.

As I trust in the Lord, I thought it would be a fun time to share a few "coincidences" that the I believe the Lord orchestrated.  As I write them I realize how silly they may sound to others, but they are significant to me.

A month or so before our referral I purchased two bags of Ethiopian coffee from a fund raiser for another adoptive family.  One bag was from Sidamo and one bag was from Harar.  A few days before we got our referral call there were just a few beans left in the bottom of the Harar bag.  I ground them and sat staring at the bag.  Something inside me told me I should save this bag with Harar across the label.  I told myself I was silly and threw it out.  However, a few days later I brewed up the very last of those beans from Harar and the phone rang...our referral call for our son from Harar.

In August, two years ago, we were still filling out paperwork and getting ready to meet with our social worker.  In Chinese adoptions there is a silly little superstition that if you see a lady bug it means you are going to meet your child soon.  Well, one evening in early August {I lost the place where I wrote down the exact date, but I think it was Aug. 3rd or 4th.} I was giving the girls a bath and noticed a weird bug on the bathtub.  It looked like a ladybug, but it was not red, it was brown.  I have never seen one before and have not seen one since.  After their bath, I took the girls to their bedroom to get dried off and dressed.  On the floor was a lady bug sticker.  The girls were both quite young at this point and we didn't have a lot of stickers around.  I have no idea where that lady bug sticker came from, but I felt like this had some meaning and I wrote it all down.  For two years I wondered what it could mean.  Was it a significant date in Baby Boy's history?  That date actually tortured me a bit, as I spent a lot of mental energy trying to figure it in to possible time lines.  When we finally did get our referral it didn't fit with anything in Baby Boy's history.  Well, two years later I think I know the meaning.  As it turns out, it was August 3rd that we met our boy.  Thank goodness I didn't know back then that it would be two more years!