Davie's 4 and Grandma is 90!

Our Birthday Girl

10 months old and big sister's birthdays

Yesterday Eliana Joy Lin was 10 months old! On her 10 month birthday we celebrated Davie Anne's 4th birthday, which is actually today, the 25th. We had a big celebration at Cypress Grove Park with lots of friends and beautiful weather. After that we headed to Deland to celebrate my grandmother's 90th birthday. Lots of fun and family there. Always a treat for me. I continue to experience a lot of sadness mixed with joy these days. One of my precious travel mates who was referred an adorable little girl from the same orphanage as Ellie found out 4 days after receiving the notice of her daughter in China that she has rectal cancer that has already spread to her lungs. My heart is so grieved over this. It just brings me to tears again and again. It is hard to be joyous that travel is coming, when that sweet lady won't be traveling with us. It also looks like we will be traveling to China to get Ellie(joy!) during the time of Sarah's debut as Catherine in the "Taming of the Shrew" up at school(sadness). Ugh! I can hardly stand it. I have never had to miss anything my kids have been a part of and yet this is totally out of my hands. Joy and sadness.....over and over again. This is an interesting time in my life. I don't remember a season like this one before. Intense joy and intense sadness. David's dad continues to hang on, though we so wish him Home. God is good all the time, and His ways are right. His timing is perfect.....in all this joy and sadness I do not question His sovereignty or His Holy character, but I do wonder how to process all that is happening and sometimes I just tell Him that this is too hard and too sad. Carrying sadness around as a part of myself and still feeling all the joy that God intends me to feel as He blesses my socks off is my calling these days. I am praying that I will do Him proud as I continue to surrender and trust in His unfailing love. What a journey!

Eliana's Care Package

care packages

Care packages....packages filled with care. Boxes filled with bits of things to show the receiver that they are cared for. Well, tomorrow I am finally going to send Eliana's care package to her. I say finally because getting a letter translated and printed into Chinese has been quite a feat. Getting the photographs and the translations for the photographs for her baby photo album was also difficult. Actually, nothing about this package has been easy, but now it is packed and ready to go tomorrow, because today is president's day. My prayer is that Eliana's orphanage director will receive this package, forward it to her foster family, that they will enjoy its contents and that they will begin to communicate to our little one about us and begin to believe that she is going to be well taken care of. Enclosed in the package is a letter thanking those who have taken care of Ellie and pledging our commitment to her. We also sent two disposable cameras hoping that they will take pictures of her in her home now and then give them to us when we get her. A care package of this magnitude can't really be delivered by the USPS, but we try to send our love and care knowing that the only time to really begin to live our love is when they place Eliana Joy Lin Wimberly in our arms. C'mon travel approval!!!!

Birthday Party girls

Birthday parties with little girls; songs with dying fathers

Today was a good day. I mean a really good day. We started out at church and then went from there to a little girl's birthday party. Now this wasn't just any little girl, it was one of Davie's friends from China. Lexi and Davie were in the same orphanage in China and our families traveled together to get our girls. I have discovered that there is something about seeing Davie play with other little girls that look so similar to her that just melts my heart. I don't think I can explain it, but it just feels so right. I have been so oblivious of race for much of my life. Not that I didn't notice race, but I ignored the hugeness of being with people like me. I've never had to even wonder what it would be like to be the minority, not anywhere I've ever been, except while in China, but then I wasn't paying much attention to anything except my baby :) Whenever we attend a Families with Children from China function I love seeing Davie with little girls who have lived her "life". Today at the party, because Jenny and Russ have friends in the adoption community and it would seem because they have made the effort to surround Lexi with other Asian adoptees, Davie was just one of about 9 little Asian girls. It was so fun for her and for me. I am so grateful to God for having awakened my spirit to that part of Davie Anne. It meets a need in her, and it meets a need in me to hang with other adoptive parents. We just "get" one another. I don't have to explain why at my age, 45, that I still feel called to be a mom to a young baby. I don't have to try to explain my passion for adoption, they just "get" it. I love that! Davie and I both feel understood and accepted and that kindred spirit thing is sweet.

After our birthday party we went to see Dad. Yesterday I spent two plus hours with him. I read some of the Psalms to him and we talked and prayed together. It was a very very sweet time. At the end he told me his favorite hymn and we sang together. He knew the words better than me and how sweet that he got choked up every time on the words "I'll rest in His unchanging grace". At 78 and 45 Dad and I both know what it is to rely completely on the grace of our Lord. Through no merit of our own we have peace with God. Amazingly, today at church we sang that hymn. That is fairly remarkable since we rarely sing hymns. "The Solid Rock" will forever remind me of my sweet father in law. So today David, Davie and I went to see Dad again. Today there was a whole crowd of us and we sang for a good long while with Dad. It was precious. He is dying. We all know it. So we sing together to encourage him and to grieve that his time with us is short. We all want to release him and we so don't want him to suffer. He continues to amaze the doctors and us with his will to hang on, but still we know his time is short. He seems more ready today and more aware that heaven is not far off. Today was a day I will not soon forget.

Oh, and little Miss Eliana. Today I will email our visa applications to AWAA and I have gathered copies of the important papers we need to take with us when we travel. One thing a day....for Ellie...that is my goal. I can't wait to go get our little one. Really, my heart longs to hold her and love her and watch how God will use her in our family. We need her and she needs us. What could be more perfect than that?