My Ebenezer

As of today, May 5, 2009, I have known my daughter for one year! What a tremendous blessing she has been for me. What a gift and privilege God has bestowed on me to allow me to parent this precious little feminine soul. She is everything I had hoped a daughter would be and more. I could never have hoped or asked for a child as beautiful to the eye as my daughter. AND I could not have been given a more "girly" little girl. She loves all things girly and feminine. Her favorite color is pink. She likes Hello Kitty band-aids and plays sweetly with her Polly Pockets. She can play dolls for hours and is already asking me to "babysit my grandchildren" (she brings the babies to me when they are crying.) She also has girly fighting habits.... she will pull your hair faster than you can say "scat" and she likes to pinch and scratch if her brothers fall out of line. Even that is a reprieve from the fist punches and full-body tackles I am used to with my boys.

One year ago today, this is the little girl we met at Baby Home #12 in St. Petersburg. I will never forget that day. She was shy and cautious. She eyed us with suspicion and wouldn't get anywhere close to us. She stayed close to her physical therapist, who is in the photo with her. We only got to visit for about 15 minutes because this was our "unofficial" meeting. She's gorgeous and healthy and still such a baby in this photo. When I look at her now, it's so hard to believe she has grown SO much in a short year. I don't have a "baby" anymore, she's growing up TOO fast!

Today, I am so filled with emotion for what God has done for our family. This "thing" for the children He has given me to fuel my life and form an instant bond with so many other mothers and blog friends. The way He chose to build our family has taught me so much more than I ever would have known without this plan. All these things that God has done, He did for OUR good, which is the thing that blows me away. In the end, all the blessing, all the struggles, all the money spent, all the time away from individual children, all the frustration of dealing with foreign governments, all the pain and all the joy, it was ALL for US... not to rescue a child, not to serve Him (although those are certainly by-products of adoption), not to save anyone but Brian and me. The mind-boggling truth is that God does all these things, allows us to serve Him in a way close to our hearts, so that WE could be changed and saved and blessed. He does it for us, out of His great love for us, and out of His desire for us to know Him in a deeper way. I'm blown away by the tender and extravagant way my Lord loves me!

And today, this is my baby girl. She talks up a storm, is still cautious with strangers and eyes them suspiciously until she is sure they are not going to try to peel her away from her mommy. She is watching "Barbie Fairitopia" right now, which is the first girly movie we've watched in our house, maybe ever. And she wanted her hair in pig-tails today that look like this....

It would have been "enough" to parent a little girl who wasn't as beautiful as Meg. But in His abundance, He saw fit to go overboard with His blessings and I want to let this post and my whole life even, be a monument to how far He has brought us and how richly and overly blessed we are.

1 Samuel 7:12

"Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, "Thus far has the LORD helped us."