photos and a neat story

These photos are from last weekend when we went to Matt's parents'. While he and his dad went to the Darlington race, Debbie, Jonah, and I went to the train station and to eat at a Japanese restaurant. Jonah loved both!

I wanted to share a neat story. With all of this energy and positivity and God-following going along with the adoption, I should have known Satan would attack. Yesterday, this comment was left on my blog:

Not sure why you would get pregnant again knowing you and your husband had a child who heartbreakingly died in utero, which is most often caused by a genetic abnormality.  Then to have another child with major health complications.  It just seems cruel to do this to your child.  Adoption would have been a much more noble and God like route.

My heart started beating so fast and my head was pounding. I would be interested to know how high my blood pressure shot up. I was so angry. And I wrote a factual, yet rather sarcastic email and responded, but of course, the email address given (angel@yahoo.com) was not real. Why am I telling you the email address? I find it interesting that the name was "angel," for as I recall, Satan is/was an angel too. Y'all, I was HOT! I let it get to me for a couple of hours and I just felt like it put me in a funk. And then Matt was in kind of a funk too (which is unusual for him), so we ended up arguing all afternoon/evening. It was not pleasant.

But then, in an effort to try to get over it all, we went to Prissy Polly's, a local barbecue place, to hear some live music and grab a quick dinner. As we were sitting there, an older gentleman approached us. He looked at me and said, "Because God has given you an angel, because you have an angel here beside you, here is an angel for you." And he handed me a little paperclip and beaded angel with a blue ribbon attached.

And as he walked away, and I looked at Jonah, I just teared up, and I thought to myself, "God redeems everything." One way or the other, sooner or later, God redeems everything. And he clearly sent me an angel to make up for the other one that I had let get to me so badly. I just want to thank all of you because SO many of you have said you're praying for us, and I just know that God hears you and is going to give us the strength when things get hard and when Satan attacks… which I know will happen even more now.

Thank you so much for being part of our redemption story.