Many months went by after my dream, months of me pursuing Christ. Not a baby, not a daughter. Just more Jesus. I also had my hands quite full with my boys. By this time, Isaac was 11, Sy was 6 and Jude was 4. And honestly, I was just trying to be the best mom I could be but felt like I was really struggling with my youngest. He challenged me to my core.  I don’t remember even thinking about adding anymore children to our family. I was full. I was tired. But thank God, it wasn’t about me or my strength, my patience or my insecurities. It wasn’t even about my children. And yet that is how God next started speaking to us, through the mouths of our babes. I started to notice some changes in my sons. They were asking for a sister, pleading for a sister. I don’t think I had any influence on this. In fact, I remember being really shocked. I really couldn’t understand why they would ask for a baby. Our lives were full and tired; didn’t they see that too?! But it didn’t take me long to realize God put this love and longing in their hearts.

I remember one evening in January (thirteen months after my dream), where it was nice enough to grill and eat outside on the patio around our newly built pool. My husband had probably made some fantastic BBQ. And after we ate and cleaned up, we kept visiting out there, enjoying family time. As the night crept up on us, the boys once again started talking about a sister. This instance really stood out to me. Maybe because it felt like they had planned it; they were plotting together. I remember looking at my husband like “where is this coming from?” I knelt down to Sy, sweet Sy. He was the loudest voice on the sister brigade. And I explained that mommy and daddy could not make a sister come, that if that was something that he really wanted, he could pray about it; that we could all pray about it. He understood praying. He liked to pray for others and would oftentimes, stop to pray for someone he saw in a cast or with crutches.

So it was no surprise that he prayed for a sister…again…and again. And his faith! Wow! He would just come up to me and tell me he was going to have a sister because he prayed for one. The END. Period. No problems.

A few weeks later I was riding bikes with my oldest and Isaac asked me, “Why don’t we just go to Africa or China and adopt a little girl?” I replied, “You would want that?” “Yeh, why not?” he said without much thought. It started to become very clear that our kids had been gifted this love for a sister. And they seemed pretty willing to go to the lengths needed. Tony and I talked about it later that night when they slept. Was this something we wanted too? Could we dare to imagine a daughter? Could we really dream about the possibility? Or were we too scared to think about the efforts it was going to take to make this a reality. It made our stomachs flip.

Our hearts felt free to feel the longing we had tucked away. Our children had freed us to go that place in our heart, freed us to hope. Correction: our God had freed us through our sons.