My Favorite Exit is #173

Five years ago today, my mom, sister, and I were just getting onto to 71 South at the Mansfield/Lucas Route 39 exit when she got a phone call that changed our lives. We were heading to visit my cousin Karen and her family for the weekend. It was around 5:45 on a Friday evening. Miss had been on the waiting list for a referral for a little girl to adopt since April of 2005. We were told the average wait for a referral was 2-4 months, and we were told the babies referred would be 1-2 months old.

As we drove down the on-ramp, my sister picked up the phone and started talking to Nancy, the director of Christian World Adoption's Guatemala program. Nancy told her that they had prayed about a little girl who the team believed was the right child for my sister.

To tell you the joy, relief, excitement, surrealism, gratitude, and questions this phone call raised for us would take too long, even for me. :) When the phone call ended after about 10 minutes, we weren't bouncing off the walls with excitement. We weren't quiet, either. We just talked and tried to soak it in.

The most surreal, unbelievable, exciting detail of the phone call was that the little girl that was the recommended referral was not 2 months old. She wasn't one month old. She wasn't even one week old. This precious child born thousands of miles away in another time zone, climate, and culture was 6 days old.

Six days old.

God is so good!

We didn't have any pictures until Monday, but this is the little face that greeted us when the pictures arrived:

To be blessed to have a picture of an adopted child at 6 days old is pretty phenomenal. To have a picture of a child at 6 days who is adopted internationally is the sign of being blessed and highly favored. We count ourselves incredibly blessed to have these pictures of Hannah. We have pictures of her at 2 months old as well - maybe I'll post those in February if I'm still feeling nostalgic! We were able to send some gifts to Hannah through another mom who had adopted from Guatemala through our agency and whose child had been placed with the same women who was fostering Hannah. One of them was a bunny created at the Build-a-Bear store that very weekend of the referral. The bunny's paw, when pushed, played my sister's voice, saying, "Hannah, this is your mommy... I love you!" It was comforting to know Hannah's foster mom kept this with Hannah each night to let Hannah grow accustomed to my sister's voice. It was incredibly neat to get that bunny back 4 months and 6 days later when we traveled to Guatemala to pick her up.

Turning 5 is a pretty big milestone, and I've chosen to celebrate it on my blog. It's reminded me of the importance of celebrating her all the time. She is truly one of God's most amazing blessings for our family.

And it's also reminded me why exit #173 on I-71 South is the best exit mankind ever created.