Back to blogging

I've been thinking for a while about blogging again. But not sure where to start or even if I will have anything to blog about. So much has changed since my last post about adoption. Ellyana Grace arrived in our family a month ago, not through adoption as we had expected for our next child. I became pregnant almost as soon as we decided to try which took us both a little by surprise. With moving house and starting over in a new city plus the first 3 months of intense morning sickness on top of the fact we'd been looking forward to adoption for so long,it's not so surprising I had a few mixed feelings. It wasn't until the very end of the pregnancy when we expected her to arrive any day that I really began to look forward to our new arrival for herself rather than just looking forward to not being pregnant. Her arrival itself was so incredibly fast that all of sudden I had a new baby daughter in my arms and had this weird reality check moment (that lasted a few days so not really a 'moment' I guess... a space of time!) After the delivery Daniel had to go and do the paperwork to get us admitted and then wasn't allowed back into the recovery room where Elly and I were for several hours. During that time, despite my initial frustration with the silly hospital rules, I was able to just sit there holding Elly and realise a few truths. One was that all this time, throughout the year and a half of adoption frustration and failure even before I was pregnant, God knew Ellyana. He had this plan all along. He has always wanted to bless our family with this beautiful little girl with a beautiful name that reflects His character. When I sat there outside Nya's preschool classroom in Bohol and asked God to show us whether we should try for a baby, He was sitting there with Ellyana in His mind. Another truth was that I am so incredibly glad that we let God be God and follow His plan rather than trying to continue to push through with our own plan. We could still be there in Bohol right now, still waiting to be matched with a child, unhappy in many aspects of our life. Instead we are living in Manila with some great new friends, a great church where we get wonderful fellowship, encouragement and challenge and of course we have Ellyana. Until we'd been in Manila a little while I didn't even realise how unhappy I had been the last 2 years. Looking back now I can hardly imagine living like that again. The final truth (that I can remember now anyway) is that Ellyana is in no way an alternative to our adoption. She is not our second best. I know perhaps not many people will understand this, because to them adoption would be a second choice rather than first. But after so long of waiting for adoption and then having to give it up, to me being pregnant in some ways seemed like second best. This was before I met our baby girl. In fact I'm pretty sure now that God chose us to have a girl rather than a boy for this reason. We were waiting for a boy (or even two), and we are still waiting for him. I'm still pretty sure (allowing here for what i've learned about God's plan being different than mine!) that our family will be blessed by the gift of a son through adoption.


Well this post didn't go in the direction i was thinking at all! But I will leave what I was thinking of saying for the next post.