God Has Answered - Again { Part 1 }

It recently occurred to me that perhaps many of you do not know the story behind the name of our blog.  A couple years ago we were going through a time in life where we felt that God was calling us to serve Him in a more complete way.  About this time we were contacted about the need for families to go to a mission in Colombia and we wanted to be open to whatever came up.  So we pursued this possibility for a couple of months.  It did not seem doors were opening, and we were not wanting to force our way through.

It had always been our desire to adopt again and we really wondered how this could all work out.  So when it seemed that we were not going to be moving to Colombia at this point we looked at each other and said, "Why not adopt now?"  And we were off!

Everything fell into place very quickly.  We chose to go though Gladney since we had a very positive experience with them in Annika's adoption.  We quickly decided that the China Waiting Child program fit our family well and about a month later, when we were still early in the paperwork gathering phase, we saw this little girl on Gladney's photo listing.  She was so cute!  But she was listed as having "multiple special needs".  We had no idea what that might mean, but it sounded pretty scary!




One of the first photos we saw of Eliana.

Around this same time I watched one of Gladney's webinars. In this particular webinar they were focusing on boys who were waiting for families.  Just before the webinar I prayed that if we were supposed to consider this little girl that she would be included in this webinar about boys.  And guess what?  Just at the end they said, "I know we are talking about boys today but I do have one little girl I want to show you..."

We sent an email requesting her file that evening.  And we fell in love with this little girl.  The rest, as they say, is history.

We knew that this very special little girl needed a very special name.  I spent days and days searching for the perfect name.  It had to have a special meaning.  It had to be very feminine sounding.  And I really wanted to find one that started with a vowel (like Erin and Annika).  I made lists and tried them out on Keith in the evening.  But the perfect name wasn't easy o find!

And then I found it.  Eliana.  A Hebrew name meaning, "God has answered."  It met all of my "requirements"! We decided to use Peace as her middle name.  "God has answered. Peace."

And that is how I came to call this blog "God Has Answered".  I am going to stop this saga here for now as it is getting rather long, but I want to tell you about the opportunity I alluded to here and another situation our family is facing that requires trust in God's perfect goodness.

It seems our family is being stretched right now. God is good.