In Our Arms One Year!

Right now it's late on December 18, 2012, but tomorrow when most people will be reading this, on December 19th, it will be exactly one year since the day we flew into Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and took custody of our Little Girl!  December 19, 2011 was her last day to ever wake up in an orphanage!

This picture was taken right after she was brought to our guesthouse: 

It was such a hard day!  It will not be the day we celebrate every year, that day will be Dec. 24th the day we arrived back in America and were united as a family of 6.  That was/is a happy day!

Of course we were happy to finally, finally be able to take custody of our daughter that day in Ethiopia, but Dec. 19th will be more of a time of remembering where she came from and honoring the hard road that finally brought us together.  Adoption never happens without loss, tremendous loss.  That little girl in the picture above just lost everything familiar about her life for the 3rd time.  The 1st was when she became an orphan, the 2nd was one month later when she was moved from a government orphanage to a care center run by our adoption agency in a different city in Ethiopia with a different language, and the 3rd was 13 months later when she came into our arms forever.

We are so thankful God brought her into our family!  Thankful for his tremendous healing in her life and thankful even for the hard and sad parts of December 19th, 2011, because the grief she was able to express that day jump-started the healing process and ultimately helped her have such a great adjustment to life in our family!  Grateful for one year of Little Girl!

Find more Wordful Wednesday here.