The Beginning...Do What?

Starting back in 2001 when we got married, Andy and I had dreams, very far off dreams of running an orphange in our younger dreamy years of just getting married. We took a trip to Quebec City in Canada and saw a stroller that pushed 8 or 10 kids and saw them holding hands and talked of what would it be like to tuck 10 children into bed every night. We sat at the top of Le Frontenac in Quebec City and reflected back to the movie "Cider House Rules" where the man running the orphanage says, "Goodnight princes and princesses of England" and thought about how he made the children feel like princes and princesses just by loving them and providing a home and food. To us then, it just seemed like a fun conversation. (note... doesn't this sound dreamy when you don't know what having kids means...)

In 2004 during Easter, we went to visit Andy's sister Katie in Boone, North Carolina and listened to a pastor speak and he didnt' speak on adoption directly, but alluded to it. When I left, I told Andy, "I know this sounds crazy, but I think we are supposed to adopt at some point in our life." We had Bobby at the time and he was 10 months old. At this point we were still stressing on whether to put Bobby in smocked john johns or jeans and t-shirt; we weren't really thinking of going out to the level of adopting a child from Ethiopia. Fortunately, God knows what we can handle at each point in our lives. He knew we were not ready to start the process then; we had a lot of growing up to do. Andy left the service and when I said this to him, his response was " I think we are supposed to adopt too." My mouth almost hit the floor, thinking, what? Did he just say that? Again, just a small dream at this point or what I like to call a "dripping".