One Year Ago Today: Submitted

Anybody else noticed the new thing Facebook is doing now? Showing your status from "a year ago today"? I noticed it a couple days ago and it reminded me of the night one of my boys decided to see how many stick pretzels he could get in his mouth at once. I had forgotten about that and it was nice to have that reminder and laugh about it all over again. He got 20, by the way.

Today's reminder from a year ago was this:

‎"WE were SUBMITTED!!!! Oh, my gosh... I think I am gonna go berserk if I don't let a screech out. Hallelujah..... Thank you Jesus! WE finally made it to this point. Now just to hear a travel datte in about 2-3 weeks. YAY!! Liza we are coming!!"

I was pretty excited as you can see by the excessive use of capitalization and exclamation points, not to mention the way I spelled date, you may not know this but when I misspell  a word it irks me to pieces. But, wasn't nothing bringing my high down that day.... lol.

Lately, as we're getting closer and closer to the first anniversary of all the more exciting parts of our adoption process I find myself looking at Liza and just marveling that she's really here (yes, I am still doing that almost 10 months later) and that she's been with us for almost a year now. If you've been reading along here for a while you know our process had lots of bumps, twists, and turns. So, to look at her after all we went through to get her here, I see a miracle every time. I feel sorry for everyone who doesn't get to look at her and see what I see. 

All that emotion coupled with the news of the little ones literally wasting away in another Eastern European country has really been bringing me to tears the past few days. I cry for them, because right now they are not someone's precious, beautiful princess or sweet little prince. I also find myself crying because I know that Liza was so close to that being her fate. I thank God every time that she is here and not in the institution she would have went to if we had been unable to get her, which almost happened.

There's a lot of our adoption story that got left out because we were busy, overwhelmed, and a lot of times didn't have a reliable internet connection. I've decided to go back in time a little bit and share all the things that never got shared before. Like Liza's story that we were told the day we met her, broke my heart. And the story of Sasha and how she was almost our daughter instead of Liza. As happy as I am that Liza is here I still think of that little one and wonder if her day will ever come. 

I think one year later is a good time to finally go back and tell the whole story. It's a good one, although bittersweet in some places and maybe a bit confusing in others. I'm kinda looking forward to it :)