Careful What You Ask For

We’re in the process of adopting a little girl from China.

If we travel there to pick up our daughter some time in the fall of 2010, by then the process will have taken well over 4 years.

We used to pray that God would soon bring Libby to us.

I can’t remember how long ago it was, but once it became obvious that our soon and God’s soon might be very different, I decided to change things up and be more specific about what I prayed for.

I began praying that God would prepare us to become better parents for when Libby becomes part of our family.

Soon after, the dog became more childlike and required more care from us (she’s around 13 years old and still acting like a puppy). She would get sick in the middle of the night, causing us to lose a little sleep, which we weren’t used to, and she would just be… bad (have you ever met a dog that chews her way through canned tuna?), and we had to deal with that in a loving, caring way.

We also began to closely observe our siblings and how they interacted with their kids, and subconsciously store information – things we liked or questioned about their parenting styles, guesses on how we might do things differently, etc.

And today, my wonderful wife is 16 weeks pregnant.

God has a sense of humor, because I don’t think you can get much more training to be better parents for adopting a child than having one of your own first.

If all goes well, and if we visit China next year in the fall when we’re predicting, these two kids could be very close in age.

I would love to be able to mess with people’s heads by telling them we have ‘twins’.

I’ve had many coincidences in my life… and this would be a biggie – but not too big for God.

We’ll see what happens.