What's Up

A journey is said to begin with just one step. Who knew one step would take us on a journey like this. A few months ago life was crazy, and seemed to be more disappointing than could ever be imagined. I had a dream of being a mother, but my only thought at the time was having a baby myself, never did I think of adoption. The thought of adopting kept creeping into my mind. I would think about it daily and probably 100 times a day. Maybe not that much but it was a lot. One night at dinner my husband and I were carrying on a conversation, when it took a change in direction. We began talking about adoption. I was aww struck, because he had felt the same calling and had been feeling it for several months along with myself, but was afraid to mention it to me because he was afraid that he would hurt my feelings.We wanted to adopt a child with down syndrome, and selfishly wanting a girl. We decided that we would start the process after the first of the year, because the holidays were so close and we didn't want anything to take away our attention from doing it all at once, because we did not want to get started doing this very important thing and then stop because of the hustle and bustle of holiday life, but what we didn't know at the time was that over the next few months our lives would be turned upside down. Andrew's grandfather passed away at the end of August, a week and half later my grandmother passed away, a few weeks later my aunt fell and broke her hip and was in the hospital for a few weeks, Thanksgiving day we get the call my sister had unexpectedly passed away, a week to the day of burying my sister my aunt passed away. So to say the thought of adoption took a seat on the back burner would be an understatement, but God had bigger plans....

After the first of the year we started back to school. On January 14 a really good friend of mine sent me an website that had children with down syndrome waiting for adoption. I was scrolling through the pictures of the children on the site and came to the first little girl Ivy. I fell in love with her then. I knew at that moment that she was the one God was calling us to. I immediately got in contact with the director of the agency and inquired about Ivy. I was very surprised at how quickly she responded to me considering it was a weekend. After corresponding back and forth with Andrea for a few days and getting the process started with Ivy she asked me how we felt about adopting two. At first I thought I don't know because I was only looking to adopt one at this time, but now there was two. Before I could answer her she sent me pictures of Rose and again I was in love. I knew these were my daughters. I feel like when you ask God for a blessing that is exactly what you will get. It will probably be bigger and better than you actually thought.

Thus has started the Journey with the Lanes, and taking us all the way around the world to Eastern Europe.