The beginning of our journey

This blog is the beginning of a journey that has technically began years ago in my heart. For many years, I have felt the burden of adoption on my heart. It is a burden that I believe that God has placed on me to love and take care of an orphan as my own. Scripturally, I believe that God also tells us to take care of the orphans and love them as He loves them. This is an exciting time of my life, as God has also placed on my husband's heart as well this burden to welcome an orphan into our home. We made the decision to move forward with adoption on December 8, 2010. However, as my husband is currently in Afghanistan on a year long deployment with the army, we have decided to wait until he is about to return home to officially begin the process. We expect to begin the process between Feb-April 2011 as he is due to return around March 2011.

Now for an introduction into our family. Frank and I have been married for 10 wonderful years! We met at Toccoa Falls College in northern Georgia and married in July of 2000. We unexpectedly became pregnant within our first year of marriage and welcomed our first son, Josiah, in Nov 2001! He was followed by a second son, Malachi, in Sept 2003. I then experienced 2 miscarriages after Malachi and then conceived and gave birth to our first daughter, Aliyah in March 2006. She was my first homebirth as well and was born while her daddy was in training with the army. For that first year, Frank was in training in GA and VA without us. When he finished he had to deploy to Iraq shortly after and was in Iraq Aug 2007-Oct 2008. Thus we were separated for 2 1/2 yrs because of training and deployment with the military. When he returned we greatly enjoyed our time together, finally, as a complete family. Then in the spring of last year we decided to have another child and we delightfully embraced another wonderful son, Judah, in Feb of this year (2010). We are so very blessed to have the 4 most wonderful children! Each and every one of our children are so very special and loved. I homeschool the children as Frank works hard as a captain in the army. He currently is finishing up his deployment to Afghanistan in which he left April of this year.

So some are probably wondering why we would want to adopt when I obviously have no fertility issues and we already have 4 beautiful and healthy children. Well, I'll tell you....because God told us to adopt. As I mentioned earlier, God has laid it on my heart for a few years now that I was going to adopt. I was just waiting on Him to also get the desire and drive to my husband. And that is exactly the place we are now. I believe that God has laid this desire on Frank's heart Dec of 2009. I say this because December last year, when I was very pregnant with Judah, Frank came to me and told me that God has laid it on his heart to name our baby Selah. We didn't know whether we were having a girl or boy at the time, yet we already had a girl name picked out. We were going to name our girl Tovah Avigayal. This was the first time in any of my pregnancies that my husband wanted to change the name after we picked it out. We also looked up the meaning of Selah and found that there were a few meanings for this name. The name is found in the book of Psalms at the end of many passages as a way to pause and meditate on God's word that you have just read. After researching the meaning of this name more in depth today, I was amazed to see God's provision in our lives through this adoption:

One possible Hebrew word that is translated “selah” is calah which means “to hang” or “to measure or weigh in the balances.” Referring to wisdom, Job says, “The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, neither shall it be valued with pure gold" (Job 28:19). The word translated “valued” in this verse is the Hebrew calah. Here Job is saying that wisdom is beyond comparing against even jewels, and when weighed in the balance against wisdom, the finest jewels cannot equal its value.

Perhaps the best way to think of “selah” is a combination of all these meanings. The Amplified Bible adds “pause and calmly think about that” to each verse where “selah” appears. When we see the word in a psalm or in Habakkuk 3, we should pause to carefully weigh the meaning of what we have just read or heard, lifting up our hearts in praise to God for His great truths. “All the earth bows down to you; they sing praise to you, they sing praise to your name." Selah! (Psalm 66:4).

So after changing the name to Selah Tovah (Tovah, a Hebrew word, meaning "good") we concluded in our hearts that we were having another daughter! But BOY oh BOY were we surprised when Judah was born a sweet perfect little boy in our home with a midwife! We were shocked, yet overjoyed to raise another son!

Now, back to today....I believe that God did in fact give Frank the name Selah for our daughter. He did lay it on his heart, but what we didn't know then is that she wasn't going to come from my womb but from another woman's womb. Our little Selah, that I believe that God promised to my husband last year, is waiting in Ethiopia for us to bring her home! And what is more amazing is that prior to reading the above passage, we had already decided on adopting a girl from Ethiopia. I am amazed that the name Selah, which God had given my husband to name our daughter, comes from the Hebrew word Calah and is found in a scripture verse in Job speaking of the very country of Cush, which is the same country of Ethiopia!! Wow...that is so amazing to me!!! Our God is an Awesome God!!!!

God calls for His children to love the orphans, and as His children we feel called to do more than that. We are called to bring a child into our home and love them as we love our own biological children. And this is our journey to bring home our daughter, whom God has already predestined into our lives. Please join us in prayer and continue following our adventures, as we follow God.