We were beginning a new season. If the last season was “joyful expectancy”, this new period was “pained waiting.” In both seasons, we have drawn closer to God than I ever imagined and learned a level of faith and trust as we continued to relinquish control and surrender to God’s plans.

Your love is like radiant diamonds
Bursting inside us we cannot contain
Your love will surely come find us
Like blazing wild fires singing Your name

God of mercy sweet love of mine
I have surrendered to Your design
May this offering stretch across the skies
And these Halleluiahs be multiplied

Yes, we had surrendered our expectations, our plans before, when we accepted God’s invitation to follow him into Adoption. And boy had he delivered, beyond our best dreams. Now we were surrendering our plans again as we waited on His answers to prayerful concerns of losing our girl.

I don’t think it is necessary to go into all the details. But the following months went something like this:

Hearing 1, 2months after birth: We were not invited because we were “not a party”, so we sat nervously waiting for a call to tell us that the opposing member had been given a court appointed attorney and would be able to contest the adoption formally. We just had to accept this and pray.

Before the next hearing we composed a letter of good faith and well-meanings and shared it. We wrote, “…We have prayed for her for years. God has truly answered our prayers, and there is no doubt in our minds that she is the daughter God chose for us. We believe that all of this is God’s plan. Even this, as hard as it is. We know that something great will come of this. Hopefully in the relationship we all have. When we decided to go through the adoption process, our intent was never to remove a child from her biological family. We believe that we are able to provide her with two parents that will give her every opportunity to feel loved and know her worth and identity. We are so thankful that you have made your love and desire for her known. And that we will be able to share your love with her openly.” We went on to offer communication, visitation, photos, family… There was no reply.

Hearing 2, 4months after birth: Again, we were not permitted to attend and discouraged from trying. 1 day before the hearing we were told the court appointed attorney had made some bold moves, changing the hearing to a custody plea. There was little time to gather our thoughts but we called in our prayer warriors. We took the day off with our girl and waited with her, expecting a phone call. Instead our attorney came to our house. Was he going to take her? I had the biggest hold of her as he explained that things did not go well, that he had “never before had an adoption follow the path this one has.” He confessed how scared he was due to details I probably best not retell. But he would later tell us again how unprecedented this was. We nearly lost our girl that day if it had not been for the wonderful action our attorney put into play that day. I would later call other attorneys to start the next horrible phase of fighting for our girl, and they would tell me how, “genius” he was for his quick actions. We know he followed how the Holy Spirit guided him and we believe prayers were being answered.

Soon after: We were put into contact with a new attorney, the best in the state for contested adoptions, we were told. She praised the attorney who saved us days before and set out a plan for the coming trials. The plan: WAIT! We would wait! And then we would try again. The ball was not in our court.

Months and months went by. Nothing. No action by the family member that had contested our adoption. Not a request for visitation or photo, not a reply to our letter. We just kept loving our girl. And praying. And trusting. And then we got the go ahead one month before our daughter turned a year old. We would try to proceed with the adoption again. The ball maybe rolled over to our court slowly. We picked it up. We had to jump through a few more hoops before we could serve the ball. We would have to go through all the background checks and fingerprints and home study again. But we were moving in a positive direction.

We celebrated our girl turning 1 with treasure chests for our treasured girl and pirates and mermaids for all the family and friends that came. We celebrated this milestone, all while we were being clued in that Moriah was not meeting developmental milestones.

While waiting for adoption headway, we were waiting for our girl to crawl and eat without vomiting and… We were beginning yet another trial that had it’s own message of Joy.