Monday, January 4, 2016 I sat down in a Starbucks determined to edit an entire wedding in one day.  I succeeded!  While I was exporting some photos I took a quick break and saw the cutest little boy on Facebook.  My friend posted this alongside the picture:

I have lots of friends who share posts like this, but this one was different.  God spoke to me.  I was unsure at first.  I mean, I’m just a normal person and wasn’t planning on adopting this year.  How on earth could it be that God would just drop our son right into my Facebook feed on an average Monday?  I sent the link to Josh and went back to working.  My text went something like, “I’m not saying we need to adopt him, but just look at this.  Again, I’m not saying we need to adopt him.”

That night at dinner Josh mentioned the message.  I’d almost forgotten about it.  We decided to pray about it until we felt some guidance.  While we both wanted to adopt, Josh had just quit his job so we could work full time in our business.  We were totally self-employed for the first time ever and we knew full well that adopting this child would be $35,000.  And that he needed surgery.  We were just hoping to pay our bills, so making an extra $35k wasn’t something we could even fathom.

We prayed.  We really wanted to take this seriously and pray for a long time about it.  We wanted to know for sure.

Fifteen minutes later I walked back into the room Josh was in and we both knew.  No need to pray any more about this decision.  It wasn’t ours.  God had already made it for us.  We immediately started sending emails to the adoption agency a friend recommended and the next morning we started the first of many many mounds of paperwork.  And the cost?  We started with $3k we had saved, and the rest was generously donated, fundraised, or paid for out of items we were able to sell!

11 months and 11 days later, we’d like to introduce you to our son, Zane Fowler!  The judge approved our adoption today and we should be bringing him home in January!  He’s a living, breathing miracle.

Here are some pictures from our trip to visit him in Eastern Europe back in the summer!