Beautiful Journey...part two

This Wednesday August 19, 2015, we received PA (pre approval) from China to adopt Ruby...we will name her Journey Mei Wanninger.  This means that the Chinese Children's Welfare Agency has agreed to accept our application to adopt her.  We have to start everything from scratch, homestudy, fingerprints, Visas the whole shooting match.  It will take anywhere from 12-14 months...and we all know adoption is expensive.  But we serve a God who places the lonely in families.  He is a Father to the fatherless and protector of the widow.   He will provide!

I look back now and remember people probably thought we were crazy in this picture.  

 We already had three children, one who was only 6 months old...and we wanted to adopt two little ones from China?  Do you remember?  When we started the adoption process over two years ago, we applied to adopt TWO children.  In fact, if you look at this picture, the frames that we are holding say "already in our hearts, someday in our arms", with the Chinese symbols for "little brother" and "little sister".  We already had the names picked out: Fisher and Journey.  But...right in the middle of the adoption we started in 2013, our agency changed their procedures for adopting two children.  At the time, we were already matched with Fisher, so our choice was this: make Fisher wait a lot longer than necessary, or only adopt one this time.  So of course, we decided to go ahead with our adoption of Fisher and wait on a little girl.  

Again, we were very confused.  We just knew that the Lord wanted us to adopt two children at the same time...but did He?  Well now it makes a lot more sense.  He did have two children on our hearts.  He did have a little brother and a little sister planned for this family.  It was just going to take a little while for us to see how His plan would actually unfold.  

And I look back at how little Trinity was in this picture, and I remember I worried a lot about her missing out on attention after Fisher would come home.  Not just attention, I worried a lot about how it would affect her in general. 

...I wonder WHAT IN THE WORLD WOULD SHE DO WITHOUT FISHER???  They are BFFs for sure!  What in the world would any of us do without Fisher?  

These two have made the best big brother and sister anyone could ask for...and I know that the Lord will use them to give such love to Journey...for however long that may be.  And I worry about Journey.  What if her heart can't be repaired?  What if she only lives to be 5 or 6 or 7 years old?  But really, we aren't guaranteed any certain number of years with any of our children, are we?  Each day is a gift.  Each child a reward, a blessing.  Oh, how can the Lord trust us enough to give us two more children?  How can He trust us enough to give us another child with a heart condition?  How can He trust us enough to give us more children at our age?  The hard cold fact is this: He doesn't.  But he does trust in His Son, Jesus Christ, and so do we.  We put all our trust in Jesus Christ and in what He has done.  We can do all things through Him who gives us strength.

So it is with excitement, and joy and great pleasure (and just a bit of scared out of our pants) that we present Journey Mei Wanninger.  

Stay tuned...it's bound to be a Beautiful Journey!