It’s been two and a half years. Two and a half years of waiting and hoping and waiting some more. We finally received a soft match with a precious girl in February and are so excited to meet her, we hope, this year.
We started this process in September of 2017 and it feels like so long ago. So many days of hoping to hear something. Days spent not expecting anything at all. Days somewhere in between hope and sadness.
What we didn’t share was that we had a match fall through last July. We had received a soft match in May 2019. Our hopes and prayers had been answered. We spent two months waiting for the official referral to come through, only to find out that the adoption fell through at the end of July. My hopes felt dashed. I felt like I had physically lost this sweet face that I knew and loved and now our family had a void where he had been. I had imagined taking him to visit family. I had imagined spending our first Christmas with him. Some days, out of nowhere, I’d feel loss for something I hadn’t even imagined with him. When we went to take Tisetso to his school supply drop off and I had to keep myself from crying because it was another thing we would never do with him.
Amidst the loss, God was working, as He always does for us. While I was grieving a loss that cut deep, God had a plan.
Brian and I were on our 10th anniversary trip (#annTENversaWEEK—quite the mouthful), in California, when we received the soft match. We couldn’t have been more thrilled. Our hearts rejoiced when we read over her file and saw her face. We said yes the next week and told Tisetso the week after that. We are waiting hopefully to meet her this year. We pray that God would spare South Africa from devastation from Covid-19. We would love for you to pray with us and rejoice with us, too.