If you have been following my articles, it is probably fairly easy to see the way that God has directly impacted and been a part of my life. Without faith, and miracles, I simply wouldn’t be here today. Throughout my entire life, I have been blessed with being a part of an amazing and faith-filled family, and being surrounded by unbelievable friends. I wanted to share a story of the Lord’s presence in my life.
Adoption distress
Growing up, I had always known of my parents desire to adopt.
(I loved the idea of it, as I thought it would be awesome to have even more siblings to pick on and play games with. This thought came before I realized that my only biological sibling, little baby bro, would end up being more than twice my size and signing to play college football. Needless to say, I don’t ever see a need to pick on him anymore, as he could just literally pick me up completely—funny how those things work out.)
So, we began the process of applying and figuring out what we needed to do.
At first my parents were intent on adopting a young girl from Russia. Little did they know that young girls were extremely hard to come by at the time. Regardless, we continued to sift through the videos and descriptions of the children. We began to fall in love with one little guy in particular named “Yegor.” Yet my mom kept leaning towards the possibility of a girl and my dad had decided to send back the group of videos so we could receive the next round. With a little miscommunication, “Yegor’s” tape had been sent back, and by the time we had realized, and asked for it back, another family had already received and shown strong interest in the tape. My family was quite heartbroken over this, as it looked to be certain they would adopt him. Then, out of nowhere, everything falls through and the tape ends up back in our mailbox. Our family took this as a sign and began the paperwork process even though we had set out to find a little girl.
As the date for the first required visit approached, I can remember the excitement building within all of us. My parents got packed and ready to head off to Russia; my brother and I would stay home with relatives. One of the first calls we received was news that the day they arrived in the orphanage, they had just received a little girl and showed her to my parents. My parents fell in love with her as they had with the little boy; and that’s when one adoption turned into two. Everything that we had been looking for, was right there for the taking, and we were so blessed to add these children to our lives.
While my parents were on their visit, they had noticed these toys that the kids had loved at the orphanage. They took pictures and decided to try and track down the toys so that the kids could have some familiar things once removed from the orphanage. Not only this, but my dad has a big sweet tooth and had brought a whole bag of Smarties with him, to share with the kids and the other children in the orphanage. They loved it as much, if not more, than my dad did, and kept asking for more. As they arrived back home, they were somehow able to track down the toys and order them. Once they arrived, to our surprise, the toy company had placed a couple of extra treats in the box—Smarties.
If these were not sufficient signs, my dad was on his way home from a trip, when he finally remembered that my mom had been begging for a journal to keep track of everything that happened throughout the process. He quickly grabbed one that looked decent and brought it home. As my mom unwrapped it and flipped it open, she became very emotional, and flipped it around to show us. It was a picture of a tree with a little boy reading a book under it. You may not think anything of this if you saw it, but our little “Yegor,” now named Aaron was in fact found under a tree.
It was just a really awesome, the way God continually reassured us that we were headed down his intended path. Be open to His Presence and you will see Him.
