This week I have been thinking of and praying for our friends, Joe and Ali, a lot. They are in Ethiopia picking up their son, Ade. Ali has a special place in my heart. She was my best friend for an important season of my life.
Our friendship blossomed after high school when we were both active in the college group at church. For some reason we exercised a lot together...walking on Ashland Avenue and lots and lots of Tae Bo. I was in better shape then! :) We had great times together. We sang together on the church worship team, got engaged within months of one another, and even got married and were in each others weddings within a month of one another. It was hard when Ryan and I moved away to Indy several months after our wedding. And now it's been over 10 years. I would have loved to have had pregnancies and play dates with Ali through these years, but God brought us here and we love Indy and our friends here too.
And now it's crazy to think that within 2 weeks of each other we're picking up our babies from Ethiopia! Sometimes it kind of feels like parallel universes! I am so happy for Joe and Ali, knowing that they are finally getting to hold their little guy and prepare to bring him home. I'm praying that God will help Ade feel safe and secure and allow his little heart to open up to his new mommy and daddy.
Ethiopia is still very fresh in my mind. I can vividly remember the sense of awe and wonder as we took in the culture that is so very different from our own. Cows in the street alongside cars, taxis and busses! The crazy driving! People everywhere! The different smells in the air (mostly tailpipe exhaust...cough.) I also remember the strange mixture of feeling relieved to be taking our daughter away from there but also sad because that was her home and her culture and she probably wouldn't have seen it in the bleak way I did if she had the chance to grow up there. There is so much to take in during a week in this strange and very different place. You want to absorb as much as you can so you can give it back to your child some day. I hope that Joe and Ali are having a great time and taking it all in.
I also remember how homesick I started to feel, missing the kids so terribly. I especially will be praying for that as I know they'll be missing their 3 kids at home.
I'm really struck at how amazing it is that God put us on this path, to complete our family with a child from Ethiopia and then to find that we are sharing this same journey with friends. Before the year is over 2 more families who we are friends with will bring their babies home from Ethiopia too. We are definitely not on this road alone! Thank God for that!
2 comments:
Shannon, that just made me cry! Thank you so much! We had a lot of fun together!!! I miss you as well, playdates and exercise would have been lots of fun! We need to talk so we can discuss our experience! There was a family from Fishers in our group that adopted. I told them about you! What is the name of your church?
Our church is called Trinity, it's in Broad Ripple. Did the family adopt an infant? boy? girl? Feel free to give them my email address or Facebook page in case they want to connect with other families who've adopted from ET.
it would be fun to compare stories! Also, I know it's a few months away, but we are coming back to St. Joe Dec. 26th-31st. Would love to see you and get the kids together.
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