Staying Warm in Florida!

Hello everyone!  Don't worry, this one will not be as long as the last one. =}

Moriah is doing great and enjoying life (as far as we can tell at least).  She has already had her first road trip and her first Chick-fil-A experience. On Thursday we left the Miami area and drove up to Orlando. We took it slow with a  long lunch at Chick-fil-A. She did great, sleeping pretty much the whole time we were in the car and ate while we were already stopped for lunch. And, of course, her first family vacation in Orlando.

The continued blessings keep flowing (as if adding a daughter to our family wasn't blessing enough). We intended on finding an extended stay type of hotel or condo to rent, but in couldn't find any in Miami area that were affordable. Thankfully, a friend was able to connect us with someone who donated a week at a timeshare in Orlando. So, we drove up to Orlando.  We cannot say thank you enough to have such a nice place to stay while we are here.

Other firsts: She has been on her first Marshall's run. Like her Mama she had a huge smile on her face while there. She even showed it again when we told the cashier that it would become her favorite store too. She has also been to Disney....ok, not really Disney World. We went to find some dinner last night and decided to stop at Downtown Disney. We walked around for a short bit, and she still slept through most of it.

Some people have been asking for prayer requests and if there is anything we need. Most obvious right now is still that we would like the legal process to continue smoothly so that we can all fly home in about a week.  Please continue to pray for this...I (Jenny) do not really want to travel through airports alone with baby and all our stuff.

Sorry, I don't have pictures here but we will post some again soon.

Fearful, Wonderful, Secret

 

 

 (sorry for formatting problems that may show up, hotel internet not co-operating)

 

 

 

Much like adoption, this post will be long but worth it!  I’d encourage you to read the whole thing and not just skip to the end, because the story is beautiful, and if you make it through, we’d love to introduce you to the girl filling these shoes:

Our adoption blog has always been based on some of the verses from Psalm 139:

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.  My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.  When I was woven together in the depths of the earth your eyes saw my unformed body.  All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

We have felt God’s leading in this process, and we can attest it has been Fearful, Wonderful, and Secret, but God has been guiding it…and we’d love to tell share that story with you.

We last left off understanding our repetitive cycle: Hope, anxiety, grief, processing.

After changing from Columbia to domestic and having that adoption fall through, we spent December grieving and processing, looking at January to begin the cycle again by entering hope.  Our plan…call the social worker and re-engage in the Columbian process, and we planned to do that late last week.

But Columbia was known to us, and we were being led to something secret.  And so the whirlwind began.

Thursday afternoon at 4:00 Jenny got a phone call from a friend of a friend, whose name we knew but whom we had never formally met.  Jenny then called me at 4:30.

These were the details: There is a baby in Miami that needs placement quick.  It would require a bunch of legal hoops, logistical hoops and financial hoops, but if we were willing to clear our schedules for a few weeks and try, there is a chance we could become parents quickly.  And so we took the risk.

Indebted to many who made it possible, we traveled to Miami on Saturday morning and by early afternoon we were at the hospital meeting baby. 

She was born on December 30^th, so we met her as she was just 6 days old.  From that point on we began caring for her at the hospital, showing up for her feedings and playing with her until she slept again, then leaving to run errands and try to get the legal process in order.

This schedule had its moments of frustration, but they were always brushed aside by the immense joy and happiness we had while being in the room with her.

And so the days came and went, hotel for a few minutes, hospital, lawyer’s office, hospital, shopping, hospital, food, hospital, hotel.  Discharge continually delayed by different people or things trying to figure out if we had jumped through all the appropriate hoops.

The days had their fear, they were filled with wonder, and for the most part, they were kept secret, protecting ourselves and our friends from the highs and lows that would come with another quick cycle of grief if things went bad.

All the while wondering as we changed diapers and fed bottles, is this our daughter?  She feels like our daughter, smells like our daughter, in some ways even looks like our daughter (the nurses think she has my nose), and we immediately loved her like our daughter.  We spent four days seeing her face when we would close our eyes, hoping we’d always be able to see it when we opened them.

But we’ve been at a hospital before, and we didn’t leave with that baby, and so we wondered, can this be real?

During that time, we were pestered by family with the curious questions:

She was born weighing 5lb. 12oz. at 18 inches long (at 2:18 p.m. for the really curious)

She has dark hair now and what we think will become blue eyes.

And she is precious, the calmest healthiest baby you could ever ask for.

We were only holding out on their questions as they would ask us for a name.

5 hours ago (as of this writing), we got to leave the hospital with her.  God’s secret place where He had formed this child finally became known to us.  Miami is the place.  And while the legal process continues to get worked out, we are forced into our first family vacation, in beautiful Florida, in 80 degree weather in the middle of January.

But let’s continue: so we finally called the family with the name.

But there is a story with that too:

Initially planning for our Columbia adoption (many months ago) we had decided only on a girl’s name.  Assuming we would keep the given Columbian name as the middle name, we knew the first name we would choose. 

When we transferred to domestic (and announced that in October) we knew that baby was a girl.  And we decided that we would have birth mom pick the middle name.

On Saturday as we traveled, we realized that when it came to a daughter, we had never even bothered thinking of a middle name, but the first one we had chosen long ago.

The list of middle names stayed very short, and because of our sarcasm and dry sense of humor was more filled with silly middle names than real ones, but just a few hours before discharge we decided.

Her middle name had to be Hope.  She breaks the cycle and is the fulfillment of the Hope that God has given us throughout the process of trying to start our family.  And now that it is started, her name will reflect that Hope God had placed inside us.

And then there is the first name:

Early in our adoption journey, Jenny was reading the story of Sarah, Abraham, and their son Isaac told in Genesis.  This story is filled with a family praying and waiting for their child together, waiting to start a family, and trusting that God might be able to do something about it.  What they ended up getting was a plan that wasn’t their own, in fact it was one they found laughable at the time, but ultimately God fulfilled their hopes.

After doing so, he asked them to do a strange thing.  Sacrifice that child to him as an offering.  Offer their hope, their promised child to God as an offering.  God’s command is summarized in this way:  Take your son, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah.  Sacrifice him there as an offering on one of the mountains I will talk about.

And so they responded with faith and put their trust in God ahead of their own plans and dreams.

As the story plays out, Abraham is spared from having to offer his child to God, and instead God provides a different offering to be used as worship for Abraham and his son to enjoy together.  In the Hebrew tradition, Abraham then names that mountain based on what has taken place there.  Verse 14 states it this way:

“So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide.  And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”

Mount Moriah, defined by Abraham as the place where the Lord has provided.

As we talked about this story months ago, we knew.  We knew that if we were ever blessed with a baby girl, we would name her Moriah.  We would name her that because God will have started our family in a way different than we might have planned it on our own.  We would name her that because we would definitively know that our family would not have started had the Lord not provided. 

And now you know.  You know we have a baby girl.  And that her name is Moriah Hope Kemper.  And that the story of our family starting is a beautiful one, beyond our wildest imagination and is a gift given to us by a God who creates all of us Fearfully, Wonderfully, and in His Secret place.

           

Meet Moriah Hope Kemper:

 

 

 

(she left the hospital in the same receiving blanket as I did just over 32 years ago)