You have all heard me talk about Ordinary Hero before. They are an amaaazing organization that has definitly impacted where I am today. They inspire me! I want to share a little back log of my life, who I was-where I thought I wanted to be and what i thought I needed in my life.
Growing up, I came from a family of 6-a mom and dad 2 brothers and a sister, I am the baby in the family, the youngest of 4. I remember being 6-7 when the cabbage patch dolls came out, I begged for one, my mom took me to the store to get one, well the white ones were all sold out....Hmmm, so what did I do? I cried first of all, but after that my mom picked me out the brown cabbage patch doll. Her name was Gina-Edy. I loved her. When I was in high school, I always "said" I wanted a black baby. WHY? I have no idea why at 13, 14 or 15 I would have said that but i remember it. I remember thinking how stinkin' cute. Well, I went thought high school, dated people from my small lil' town of about 1,000 people-ALL white people. We had one stop light in our town. ONE. There was ONE "major" intersection if we can call it "major" but it had a stop light, so it was major to us-then. I had 52 people in my graduating class. I was a cheerleader. I didn't really care if people liked me or not, i just had my group of friends and that was that.
I graduated, went to a local community college in which I thought for child development. I worked in a preschool for about 2 years, soon I realized "NOPE". Not for me. I decided hey, Cosmetology sounds fun, let's try that. In that time I started dating Ryan (that back log story is for another time) : )
We got married at the ripe ol' age of 21 and 27, we expected to "have" kids by 23-24. Well, after 3 ectopic (tubal) pregnancies, lots of crying, sadness and thinking we were being punished we gave IVF a shot. I produce A LOT of eggs, which in turn produced LOTS of embryos. Long story short, I had a miscarriage at 12 weeks (baby had passed at 9 weeks 3 days) . It was a baby boy. But my feelings after hearing those words at my appt. was different than my other losses. At this point I was just MAD. But I also had this feeling come over me that said "stop fighing me"..... I got home, Ryan was there waiting for me and I said to him "we're adopting". He graciously says to me "Babe, whatever you want to do, I am on board, Let's do this". It wasn't an hour later my girlfriends were here consoling me, supporting me, making me laugh and I was on the computer searching international adoption. It was a moment that I wanted to scream and praise the lord I had finally felt some sort of relief all at the same time.
Fast Forward through all of our process and BOOM-here we are. (If you would like to read our adoption stories, you can visit our family blog here ) Now, onto my point.
After thinking we were being punished by God with all of our failed pregnancies, it was not that at all. My goodness, he was telling us-YOU NEED AFRICA IN YOUR HEARTS! Our adoptions have done SO mch MORE than giving us 2 beautiful children-as if that wasn't enough! Some of our closest and most dearest friends are from our adoptions. I know the word of Jesus Christ SO much more now, and not only do I know the words of Jesus Christ, I LOVE it and I "get it". The person I used to be would want want want want and think that I needed more more more. And I'm not gonna lie, most of those wants and "needs" were material things. The bigger house, more money, the best hand bag, jeans, shoes, etc. Don't get me wrong, I still love all of those things, and sometimes I do splurge on those items for myself and the children, but not without giving to others first, and doing more for others first. And definitly not at the rate I used to, not only because i see things differently now but because our lifestyle has changed (at times I thought our world was going to end, turns out we will survive! WHEW! haha) and we just can't anymore. I have a different passion. And the others i still do love, they just take a different position in my life now days. They're still there, just not quite like they used to be.
So, turns out God had my hand the whole time, from "Gina-Edy" , the failed pregnancies, until now.
This holds true.
No comments:
Post a Comment