Miracle

Do you believe in miracles? Do you believe that God speaks to us? I guess how you answer that question depends on what you believe about God in the first place. You may not believe He exists; you might believe He does, but you don't know if He speaks or is even involved in our lives. I believed all these things before today, and I believe them now more than ever. Today our daughter came home, and came home to stay. This was not an accident that happened, but rather the plan of a good, loving, powerful God. Let me explain. Seventeen years ago we received what we then believed to be a prophetic word from God regarding the specific timing of our becoming parents. Back then we were young newlyweds with the whole world ahead of us. We had dreams of how our lives would unfold, and we expected that life would be exactly as we pictured it. But as time went by we experienced heartaches and disappointment, and one of those disappointments was finding out we couldn't have kids. Well, it wasn't total disappointment, because we heard from God that we would have kids. Or did we?

Over the years we clung to the hope that we would become pregnant, that God would supernaturally heal our infertility. And every year that came and went was a reminder that we had unfulfilled hopes, had missed the boat or had simply heard wrong. After all, when it comes to hearing from God the Bible says we only get parts of the picture, and those parts aren't always clear (1 Corinthians 13:8-12). This gave us some sort of comfort, believing that maybe we just heard wrong. But that opens up another can of worms, because if you heard wrong about one thing how then can you know that you did hear God speak to you about other things? This touches on deeper issues: Is God good? Does God care about our suffering? Can He do anything about it in the first place? These are questions I have had to wrestle with in my experience; I didn't want to just simply read about God's involvement in the Bible, or hear about it from other people - I wanted to encounter it for myself. And while I can say that I have experienced God's goodness in so many ways I felt a little short changed in some departments. That is, until today.

You see, the word we got from God was that we would become parents at Christmastime. But the hope of that word actually coming to pass died a slow death, little by little, with each passing December. By the time we decided to adopt we wrote off all hope of pregnancy, and any time table that we expected along with it. We certainly didn't expect a placement to happen during the holiday season, as it's the policy of Alberta Children's Services to not place kids during birthdays and Christmases. But it was recommended that Jess be placed with an adoptive family ASAP, and her placement with us was scheduled for December 6. It wasn't until a few weeks after we first met Jess that I made the connection. We were driving along one day and it hit me all of a sudden. "Angel," I said, "Do you remember when we heard from God that we were going to be parents at Christmas?" It was so long ago (and so painful) that Angel hardly remembered. Still, I dared not believe it. After all, it was a tentative date which depended on how well Jess took to us. If it came down to it Jess would have been kept in foster care til January. I just couldn't bring myself to embrace the idea that God came through here, as I didn't want to risk more heartache and disappointment. And yet this morning we picked her and her things up, and as I write this she's making Christmas ornaments with Angel at our dining table...

The odds we were given of a pregnancy happening were 1 in 100. What are the odds of Jessica being placed with us, today of all days? 1 in 1000? We were selected, unanimously by a committee of social workers, out of a group of eleven families who were potential matches for Jessica; a unanimous decision, we are told, is uncommon. Our prayer that we would only have to wait months for a match and not years (which was a real possibility) was answered in September. As well, Sharon (our placement worker) told us that there is currently a surplus of approved parents waiting to adopt in Alberta; in her words, it's a tight adoption market these days. And here's the real kicker: before we were matched with Jessica we had a name we used to refer to whatever child we were going to adopt. We decided we needed one as it was easier to have a generic name rather than referring to a hypothetical adoptee as "the child." And as we thought about it we felt that God had given us a specific name; a name, I have to admit, I felt a bit awkward using. And what was that name?

Miracle.

Need I say more?