The 17th stocking

So the past couple of weeks I have touched on the 17 stockings on our fire place.  Up 4 from last year at this time. 

Anyone that know the two of us knows that we are very passionate about our kids and about adoption in general.  It has amazed me how we have fallen head over heals in love with each of our children even before we met them.    God places a love in a parents heart and bonds them to a child in a way that is hard to explain.  I felt an example of this recently and will talk more about that in a bit.

So you are still asking what about the last stocking?   Hang in there! 

For the past year or so, Robin has been wanting to adopt again.  I have been very clear that unless God made it abundantly clear we were to start again, I was finished.  However we agreed to pray together about it.  My consistent prayer has been "God either take this desire away from Robin or give it to me, Just please make us of one heart about this".  It took time but He did just that. 

Well in September a little girl came into our path.   She is from Southern China very near where Laura is from.   We were offered the opportunity to look at her file.  We decided to review the file and pray about it.  Over the following week, a number of things happened that made it very clear that this very well could be our child, so we stepped out on faith and began the process for our 6th adoption.

So the 17th stocking belongs to Hannah Joy our 9th child and 4th daughter.  We hope to go get her some time next summer.   She is currently 6 years old very close in age to Joshua.

We are trusting that God has this entire situation under His control and will provide for our needs as we go through this process.  We are trusting that He is taking care of Hannah until we can get there and that He will pave the way for us to get all of the paperwork and approvals out of the way and make the trip to become her "Forever Family"

 Here is a picture of our newest addition, soon to be Hannah Joy Collier.

Back to that bond I talked about.   On our trip at Thanksgiving we were listening to Christmas music as we traveled and a song came on "All I Really Want for Christmas" by Steven Curtis Chapman.   More on that song in the next blog.   The words tore at my heart and brought me to tears.  I found my heart breaking at the realization that my daughter would not be with our family this year that she would be in an orphanage half way around the globe, not knowing that a family was waiting to come get her and make a loved daughter, our child.   Imagine being in a place where all you really want for Christmas is a family?   That breaks my heart.

Next blog we will look at the words of the song and dig a bit deeper into that. 

So there you have it the mystery of the 17th stocking is solved.  I will be doing more blogging to keep everyone informed as we go through this process.

Thanks for following along.