There was a hiccup with one of the t-shirt links in the previous post. It has been fixed! You can also click here to view and order.

This very special t-shirt has been designed by my Goddaughter, Meghan, a graphic artist, as a fundraiser to help us bring Song-Felicity home. It incorporates the scripture passage from the book of Isaiah that has grown particularly precious to us during this journey to our daughter:

“I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west…Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth.”

The shirts are available for purchase through March 28th.

We thank God for the gift of you journeying along with us. We are growing so close to the day Song-Felicity will be in our arms.

7 March MMXVI

Feast Day of Saint Felicity of Carthage

From the time we knew we had a daughter in China, we began discerning her name. “Song” was part of the name given to her when she arrived at the orphanage and we knew from the beginning we would keep it. From the video we had received of her, we witnessed that she recognized it as her name. We did not want to take that from her and, as a bonus, we thought it was beautiful.

All of our family’s girls have double names so we did not have to decide that she would too. With each of our children, I have asked God to reveal their name to me. And He has each time…clearly. But this time, I was more anxious about the process. Perhaps because China had already chosen one of her names or perhaps because I was aware more this time of whom I was naming since I could look into pictures of her sweet face. But, for whatever reason, I did not have the same peace with the process.

All of our children are named for family members and saints and angels. Each child has a name to which great thought and meaning has been attached by us and by our Catholic Christian heritage, I repeatedly pleaded with God to reveal the name to me that HE had chosen for this daughter and my pleading persisted throughout last summer.

From the beginning, our oldest daughter reminded me of how much she has always loved the name “Felicity”. I repeatedly told her that I love it too but that our baby’s name must have a meaning beyond something that is pretty. She already had one name that will eternally anchor her to China and the one we would choose needed to anchor her to both her identity as a Christian and to her identity as a Williams daughter. I cannot count how many times this conversation repeated itself…my teen aged daughter pointing out to me how much she loved the name Felicity and how it means “happiness” and my responding to her by insisting that we had to choose a name with “meaning”.

The list of names grew and diminished over and over and over again. Repeatedly during the day, I would text suggestions to my husband that he would either completely dismiss or recognize as options. But that moment of peaceful certainty never came and until it did I knew I would not rest. I would run these “lists” by my oldest daughter and she would often say, “It’s pretty, Mama, but you know I love Felicity.”

And I liked Felicity too…so much so that I never dreamed it could be anything beyond pretty to me. It did not escape me that St. Felicity was mentioned in a Eucharistic prayer or that she was included in the Roman Catholic Litany of the Saints. But I did not know her. She was not a member of the Church Triumphant whom I was familiar with. I have so many saintly friends that I know intimately…their birth dates and death dates and parents and prayers and favorite foods. Felicity was not one of them.

But shortly before school started back, I awoke one morning knowing I had to devote it to getting to know this Felicity of Carthage. So I settled in at my computer with a summer morning cup of coffee intent on becoming familiar with her. Never could I have imagined how powerfully her life would speak to mine.

Felicity of Carthage was a 3rd century Christian martyr. While awaiting her martyrdom because she refused to renounce her faith in Christ, she was imprisoned as she awaited her execution. At the time of her imprisonment she was pregnant with a baby girl whom she ultimately gave birth to there. Two days before the execution, Felicity went into labor and was mocked as she labored with her daughter by her prison guards who laughed at her saying, ” If you think you suffer now, how will you stand it when you face the wild beasts?” Felicity answered, ” Now I’m the one who is suffering, but in the arena Another will be in me suffering for me because I will be suffering for Him.” Felicity delivered her daughter who was immediately adopted by another Christian woman of Carthage. St. Felicity is a patron saint of mothers who are separated from their children.

Witnessing her story took my breath away. Before I left my desk that summer morning, I was peacefully certain that my daughter in China was St. Felicity’s namesake. Her story had such an intimate adoption association. A baby girl was surrendered to an adoptive family by a mother who loved her. And, unbelievably to me, Felicity was a patron of mothers who are separated from their children.

I will likely never know the name of my daughter’s China mother. But I know naming her for the patron of mothers who are separated from their children…for a saintly mother who knew the pain of being separated from her own baby girl…is a way I can honor both my Catholic faith and this China woman with whom I will always share such a sacred connection.

I giggled as I realized that throughout the summer I had spent pleading with the Lord to reveal my daughter’s name to me, He had been all along. Since the moment I knew she was on the way from China, God had been speaking the name He had chosen for her to me through the voice of her sister. How many times do I plead with Him to speak His Will to me or reveal Himself while losing sight of the fact that He already has? When will I realize that He is already in the moment that frightens me? He knows what my heart needs and He has already satisfied it. He must grow weary while waiting on me to recognize Him.

Around 1800 years ago on this day, St. Felicity of Carthage, along with St. Perpetua and their companions, was martyred for her faith in the One Who is in every moment that she feared or that we do. And in the midst of the suffering and pain of the journey that returned her to Him, a beautiful adoption story of a baby girl to a Christian mother unfolded.

St. Felicity, patroness of mothers who are separated from their children,

Oro Pro Nobis!

8 February MMXVI
Happy Chinese New Year….Year of the Monkey!

I have carried the same key chain since I was 18 years old. Other than the couple of years that my keys hung from a paint-penned plastic picture frame which held a high school photograph, the key chain I now carry is the only one I ever have.

It is made from an antique silver spoon handle. It is lovely. I received it in the mail from my friend, Michelle, during my freshman year away at college while I was living in a dorm room. It arrived during a spell when I was hopelessly homesick and heartbroken. It honored no specific occasion. It was a “just because” gift… as if she sensed my need to be encouraged even though I had not breathed a word of my heartache to her. The gift was so much more than a key chain to me. It was an anchor to home and to my longest standing friendship there.

Michelle and I have been friends since we were 5. We met in our kindergarten class at the Catholic school which we now both have children attending. We have been friends since. There have been seasons in our over forty years of friendship that we were not in contact as often as others but the friendship between us has never waned.

We remember the births of each others’ younger siblings. We received our First Holy Communion together when we were in elementary school and were Confirmed together right before we entered high school. We attended dances in school gymnasiums while venturing into new friendships at our different high schools. I drove her home from her brother’s funeral after his tragic death when we were teenagers and, more than 20 years later, our friendship was a quiet anchor through the death of my sister.

We were in each others’ weddings and sat vigil during the births of each others’ children. I sat nearby during her mother’s funeral mourning a woman who had mothered us both. Years later, I sat nearby as her father remarried understanding deeply how both bitterness and sweetness were mingling within my friend. Most everything we have navigated in our lives we have, to some extent, navigated together.

Michelle and I are so alike and so very different…perhaps the perfect cocktail for our lifelong friendship. We both adore old houses and antiques. We share an affinity for anything with a mysterious or elegant history. We effortlessly attach sappy sentiment to beautiful objects. We both treasure our faith and its roots and take, so very seriously, our role of bearing witness to it and passing it down to our children.

But Michelle has the patience of Job and the precious calm character that accompanies it. I possess neither. Many times through the years I have worried myself to death about her. I have held my breath during her pregnancies with both of her girls knowing she has never had the chicken pox or the vaccine to prevent it. I spent months terrified that she would contract it while carrying one of them. Each time I have nearly snapped from my worry for her I have asked her how SHE can be so calm while I am such a wreck. She calmly answers that she does not need to worry because I worry plenty for both of us.

Michelle has many gifts which I do not. One of them is her talent for sewing that was passed down so beautifully to her by her precious mother. It is truly an art. The perfectly even stitches that flow from her calm hands cause one to wonder how the mechanics of a machine are often not involved.

She has sewn for all of my children…clothes, blankets, toddler sized totes as birthday party favors…and several times she has sewn the blankets that snuggled my newborns on their trips home from the hospital. When our sixth child was born, Michelle made her homecoming blanket from a piece of my great grandmother’s chenille bedspread and lined it with a nursery fabric I had chosen. Its beauty and sentiment are so precious to me that I have never packed it away. It is always carefully folded somewhere within my sight.

Michelle recently informed me that she has a piece of the bedspread remaining that is large enough to make Song-Felicity’s crib blanket. The thought of my two youngest daughters having blankets made from the same familial fabric warms me deeply. I chose a feminine Asian fabric to pair with the sentimental bedspread remnant and began to envision the precious blanket that would result.

Last week we met after school pickup just a short distance away from the Kindergarten where we met over 40 years ago. We needed to discuss the blanket and I needed to pick some things up that she had sewn for me.

As a complete surprise, Michelle gave me two toddler sized dresses that she had made for Song-Felicity. She had finished both of them off with my daughter’s monogram. I never could have anticipated how deeply they would move me. Seeing Song-Felicity’s monogram for the first time in my hands…one initial chosen by China and the remaining ones chosen by us…something so personal to her…made me feel like I was somehow holding a part of her within my grasp.

Tiny dresses sewn just for her by the hands of one who has been dear to me for over four decades…a precious embrace of my baby girl in the lovely artistic love language of my true and longest-standing friend…no embrace of my baby could be more meaningful to my heart.

Michelle’s support of my journey to China and of my daughter awaiting me there is just a different expression of the same enduring foundation. A silver spoon key chain anchored me to home and to our friendship when I was a heartsick teenager. A sentimental blanket and tiny precious dresses will anchor me to the same sacred security as I head across the sea to bring my baby home.

“There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.”

—- Saint Thomas Aquinas

We are selling these ancient Chinese destiny coin ornaments as a fundraiser toward bringing Song-Felicity home. They are made from authentic ancient coins…many from the Song dynasty. No two coins are alike so each is a truly unique gift. Each coin is entwined with a significant red cord and comes with a card printed with the Chinese Proverb:

“An invisible red thread connects those destined to meet. Regardless of time, place or circumstance, the thread may stretch or tangle, but never break.”

They are $20 each. Contact Anne-Elizabeth to order and she will arrange getting one to you.

21 January MMXVI

Jimmy and I have been blessed with the precious friendship of a man who is currently at a Catholic seminary discerning a call to the priesthood. Our friendship predates his discernment process. We met him while he was completing his PhD at Florida State in a science that I am completely incapable of grasping. He is one of those precious people who is both humble and brilliant.

But he is also so beautiful and charming mentally, physically and spiritually that none of us who know him were at all surprised when he shared his call to discern the priesthood. He is so dear to us that we can only imagine how God delights in him. It makes perfect sense that God will call him to Himself in a particularly intimate way.

This sweet seminarian friend is one of the handful of people that I periodically petition to storm heaven with me. Recently, many of my prayer petitions have centered on our daughter in China.

Yesterday, I awoke to new pictures of Song-Felicity in my email! In several of them, she is clutching a photo of Jimmy and me. Our contact in China emailed me that the orphanage staff told her that Song-Felicity really likes the photo. Learning this, I melted into a puddle.

My prayers for Song-Felicity, since she entered my heart, have been countless. But the prayer that has consistently prevailed has been for God to prepare my baby girl’s heart to receive us as her family and for her transition to us to be as gentle as possible. Witnessing our image in her tiny hand instantly prompted me to reach out, once more, to that handful of people whose prayers I particularly find rest in. I felt a tug that perhaps God was working to reach her through our photograph. Our sweet seminarian was, of course, one to whom I turned.

I again petitioned prayers from those dear to me that Song-Felicity’s heart be prepared to receive us as her family. I pointed out the picture and my suspicion that God might be working through it to prepare her. And, as I have experienced multiple times now, I felt a peace in just entrusting the burdens and desires of my heart to the souls I was confident would lift them in their own prayers toward heaven.

This morning I awoke to an email from our precious seminarian friend that both took my breath away and brought me to my knees:

“Anne-Elizabeth,

Thank you for the picture!

I am utterly amazed that this email/picture was waiting for me in my inbox…I actually just signed in to write you an email regarding Song-Felicity. During Adoration tonight (for respect life) my mind was suddenly flooded with the precious name of Song-Felicity. You, Jimmy and your entire family were lifted up to the Father in prayer tonight.”

What a sacred, holy gift to my heart! Before my petitions for my baby were even known to the one I had entrusted to lift them, he had already heard them from Heaven! They were whispered to his heart in a quiet, holy flood by the Lord Himself while he was in prayer! And through this awareness that my God had whispered my daughter’s name into the prayers of one He knows I turn to, He simultaneously whispered Peace into me.

God is answering our prayers before we utter them. He is comforting our hearts before we are aware of how deeply they are hurting. He is already in my next moment and in my next breath and in my next plea toward Heaven…

And through all of these “nexts” He is assuring me, His child too, that He is already tending to the part of my heart that is waiting with Him in China.

“Let Him have all your worries and cares, for He is always thinking about you and watching everything that concerns you.”
1 Peter 5:7

8 January MMXVI

We know precious little about the likes and dislikes of Song-Felicity Williams but we know she loves cake. We have photographed evidence of her that bears witness to it.

In September, we sent a birthday cake to her orphanage in China to celebrate her second birthday. The following morning we awoke to emailed photographs of her birthday celebration with fellow toddler friends. Nearly every picture shows either her mouth opened wide to a fork full of cake or a sweet smile shining through birthday frosting. Those pictures are priceless treasures to us as we await her homecoming.

We love birthdays in our family and we treasure celebrating them. As we anticipated the birth of each of our babies, I selected a birthday cake that would be theirs. A cheese cake, a strawberry cake, a hummingbird cake, a red velvet cake, a pumpkin pound cake and a coconut cake…each the signature of a child’s birthday celebration. My mother made them the day each child was born and had a birthday party with our other children. That night, she brought the remainder of the cake to Jimmy and me. We ate birthday cake in our hospital room and toasted our newborn with champagne. Each year since, on their birthdays, I have made their personal birthday cakes…the same ones I selected myself for each of them while I still carried them inside of me.

Sending a birthday cake to my baby in an orphanage dislodged an avalanche of emotions within my heart. I was saddened that I could not make it myself for her…saddened that an awareness of her birth was veiled from me until she was nearly two…and so very saddened that every birthday she has had since her arrival in this world has been spent in an orphanage.

But when I witnessed that smile on her face through the birthday frosting, it confirmed for me that 1. she is indeed a birthday cake-loving Williams baby and that 2. a cake will undoubtedly be involved the day she arrives in our arms in China.

She will not understand our spoken language when we get to her but I suspect she will understand that we are happy when she crosses the threshold of our Chinese hotel room and finds a cake waiting for her. My primary mission for our hours in China before we have Song-Felicity in our arms will be to locate that cake and have it waiting for her when she takes her first physical steps into our family. God bless our in-country guide! He or she is going to think I am crazy when I ask for assistance finding a cake the minute our plane touches down in China!

As my cake plan began to form, another longing also surfaced…a longing for Song-Felicity to have a meaningful memento to remind her of our first cake moments. I am hyper sentimental. I long and seek to attach meaning to beautiful things. I love wearing my Poppy’s boots even though they swallow my feet. I love wearing the ring that my grandmother wore and love the memories of spinning it around and around her right hand ring finger as a child. I love eating at my grandmother’s table in our home now and using my great Aunt Mary’s table linens. Everything within me delights in being surrounded by things that have been loved by those I love.

So I began to dream of eating Song-Felicity’s cake off of pretty china plates that would belong to her when she grows up as a physical reminder of our first moments together in China. I imagined them in detail. In my mind they were antique and fragile and lovely. I fantasized about the pink cherry blossoms that would grace them as a nod to her Asian heritage. I pictured eating her birthday cake off of them with her and with her Daddy and siblings each year from now on. I envisioned them displayed behind glass in our home where she can always see them and be reminded that they are hers and told and retold and retold of our first cake moments together in China.

I am well aware that not many people will understand my longing to bubble wrap an antique china dessert service and take it across the sea in my carry-on luggage. I recognize that this is a quirk of mine. But I knew exactly who would understand…understands me regularly and whom I, for some reason, needed to understand me now.

My Godfather also happens to be my uncle and I am convinced that I received more of my genetic predispositions from him than from anyone else on my family tree. My left handedness, an affinity for angels, a love of antiques, my sentimental sappiness and an uncanny ability to remember things from our very early childhoods.

I needed help finding Song-Felicity’s cake china and he is the very best at locating precious things. But so much more, I needed someone to “get” this quirky, though undeniably impractical, desire and vision of mine…a desire to gift a toddler with a beautiful heirloom and attach a meaning to it by toting it across the sea.

I did not need to see his face. We were on the phone when I shared my heart. But I heard him “get” me through his voice. Though I had shared my heirloom idea with several people, he was the one who entered effortlessly into my excitement and my vision and my mission. A part of me rested after I heard him share the delight of the cake vision with me. He assured me that he would help me look for the china and said he would email pictures of options he found. And he insisted that he wanted it to be a gift to Song-Felicity from him.

Only days later, I heard from him that he would not be emailing pictures. This time, I was the one who recognized the delight in his voice revealing he had found Song-Felicity’s heirloom. He assured me that he was so certain that it was “the one” that he did not need my approval. He was excited about me seeing it for the first time when I could hold it in my hands. I began to joyfully anticipate its arrival and we made a “date” to be on the phone with each other as I opened it so we could open it “together”.

There is no way my heart could have been prepared to navigate the emotions that pierced it throughout the hours following my excavation of the precious china pieces from their shroud of bubble wrap and styrofoam peanuts. Yes. They are the perfect rendering of my vision for them. My Godfather knows my heart and its desires well enough that I never doubted that they would be. But they are also so very much more.

The antique china pieces are a tangible recognition of Song-Felicity as my daughter and an avenue to honoring that. My baby girl across the sea whose clothing is even community property was now the owner of something lovely and precious. Though none of that finds meaning with a toddler, it finds meaning so deeply within her mother and it will surely become something beyond dear to her in years to come. As she grows up, this heirloom will be a witness to how very much she was loved and welcomed and achingly awaited before she ever made her way to us.

And the gift also echoes and affirms how precious she is, and has been always, to her eternal Father. Through the antique china pieces, I glimpse how He, too, is treasuring His beloved child. And the awareness that He is treasuring her through someone so dear to me is heavenly evidence to my heart of how intimately He chooses to express His Own love for each of us through the way we love each other. For these, and for so many more reasons that can never be reduced to words, my baby daughter’s antique cherry blossom china is a treasure even now before it is ever attached to the memories we will make with her.

As I gaze at her heirloom day after day…multiple times in each one of them, I also look forward to this next September when Song-Felicity’s birthday will be celebrated with this special gift and our China memories that have been attached to it by then. And I joyfully anticipate candle wishes and cake frosting kisses with our daughter perched on my lap eating the cake I have already chosen for her while carrying her within my heart….a caramel pound cake.

23 December MMXV
Christmas Eve in Guangzhou, China

Since becoming aware of our child in China, I am perpetually aware of the time of day in her city. When I glance at my watch or my phone, my mind automatically calculates the time in Guangzhou and I envision what Song-Felicity may be doing…awaking, napping, playing, being rocked or cuddled by someone loving….hopefully. Her schedule which has been sent to us has been studied and memorized and studied again. It is known by heart…by my heart. I always “know when she is sleeping and know when she’s awake.”

And I know that it is now the first early morning moments of Christmas Eve in Guangzhou.

As we enter into the holiest hours surrounding the Savior quietly arriving to dwell among us, my heart is reflecting on His birth from a somewhat different angle.

Historically, the focus of my reflection on His arrival has centered on His mother. As a Catholic Christian, she is precious to me. When Christ told the apostle John, “Behold your mother”, He told me to behold her as mine, too. I have always related to her as the mother I share with my Savior. And in the last two decades, as a mother myself, I have reflected on her role as the mother of God, even more. When I was expecting our 6th child, I was due Christmas Eve. My mind often contemplated the Blessed Mother and how very uncomfortable she must have been riding a donkey to Bethlehem while so “great with Child.” I was having a hard time finding a comfortable position in our heated van during those last few days before our child’s arrival. I was constantly reminded during that last stretch of pregnancy how, as Gabriel sweetly stated, she was so “full of grace”…a grace I indeed did not have as I waddled toward delivery.

But this year, I find my focus shifting toward St. Joseph. A growing awareness and appreciation of his role as an adoptive parent is taking root somewhere deep within me. He recognized that he was called to parent a Child who did not share the blood line running through his veins. He had enough grace to have faith in the faithfulness of his bride and in the God they both adored to embrace the role of parenting her Child. Surely, St. Joseph was familiar with some suspecting he was crazy for being confident that he was called to parent a child that was not his “own”. I find such comfort in knowing he likely understands that there is no way for a child to be more our own than for God to ask us to make it so. Somehow, the people who do not understand that pale in the light of the awareness that the man who adopted my Savior knows it intimately. He knew this insecurity and this honor, this holy humbling and this blessing.

I find myself reflecting on the way St. Joseph elegantly and faithfully lived out his call to father the Savior without turning back. Once he said “yes” to the call, he lived it out with a holy purpose. He protected the newborn Jesus and His mother. He abandoned family and career and security of any sort to flee to a foreign land for his Child’s protection. I admire his committed parental witness so much more this Christmas. I need it so much more. I cling to it so much more.

As this Christmas approaches, when I reflect on Baby Jesus, my heart is not only drawn to His heavenly Father but to His earthly one as well…the one who claimed Him and protected Him and loved Him as He dwelt among us. The Lord surely has a special place in His heart for adoptive families because, He, Himself, was born into one. This holy season, I am more aware than ever that, when we approach the manger, we approach it to adore an adopted Savior.

Faithful St. Joseph, patron of all adoptive parents,

Oro Pro Nobis!

I just mailed a somewhat heavy box to China with an undoubtedly heavy heart. I mailed the first Christmas gifts that Song-Felicity will ever receive from us and I was completely unprepared to feel the way I did when I walked out of the very crowded pre-holiday post office. Once the door to my van was closed and I was seated inside, quiet tears fell into my lap.

Toddlers are not supposed to receive Christmas gifts from their parents through post offices and governmental Customs agencies. They are supposed to receive them via a sleigh propelled by tiny reindeer while seated, still sleepy-eyed, on the laps of their mothers. And though I understand that Song-Felicity does not comprehend enough about us or about Christmas to be troubled by this distance or by these delivery methods, I do understand. And it breaks my heart so much more than I was prepared for it to.

So much of my heart went into that box. Williams children get three Christmas gifts just like Baby Jesus did and settling on the three gifts that were going to cross the sea to represent our heart for our child in China was more complicated than I thought it could possibly be. Through the years, we have parented six two-year-olds at Christmas time and, though none of them comprehended Christmas and its precious Gift, they each comprehended that Christmas is special…and that they are special…so very special to us.

This awareness is what I really longed to box up and send to our China baby girl for Christmas. And realizing that my longing could not truly be satisfied was unsettling…is unsettling…on a very deep level of my maternity.

The somber peace I ultimately find in our gifts is in the knowledge that, though Song-Felicity does not comprehend what we long to give to her for Christmas now, one day she will. So gifts were pondered and chosen that would hopefully represent our Christmas wishes for her. The gifts and their wishes were sent across the sea today.

Our infant Lord received gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh at His birth as symbols that pointed towards His identity. Gold because He is the King of all kings, frankincense because He is the Priest of all priests and myrrh to honor His ultimate sacrifice.

Our daughter is receiving symbolic gifts, too. Not so much symbolic of who she is but more so of our wishes and prayers for her:

A cloth doll…to symbolize our wishes for her to delight in this fleeting season that embodies the joys of childhood and make-believe…

A fuzzy blanket… to symbolize our longing for her to feel safe and secure and warm…

And a pale pink tutu…because pale pink is her Mama’s favorite color and because nothing makes a girl feel prettier than twirling in a tutu! Oh how I wish I could see her in it! I am confident that our lack of common language would in no way hinder her from instinctively twirling once her tiny body is inside of it!

Childhood joy, warm security and an awareness of her beauty as a daughter of the Infant King Whose birth we now recall…these are the Christmas wishes we sent across the sea today….with the prayer that we may never again spend a Christmas separated from each other by so much sea and by so much distance.

2 December MMXV

It can be no coincidence that our very last documents for China were sent as Advent arrived on the calendar. It seems rather appropriate. No longer distracted by checking things off of our adoption “to-do” list, the real waiting begins.

But in a silent way, Advent’s arrival this year does not seem so evident for us. Perhaps because our family has been living in an Advent of sorts since June when Song-Felicity entered our hearts and they began aching and longing for her. Everything that Advent ushers in…the aching and the longing, the hope that the light of the Christ Child is indeed dawning just beyond a horizon that we can see…faith that He is on His way though our weary world remains so dark…all of these emotions have been living in our home long before this liturgical Advent fell upon us.

So I find myself, this season, already somewhat weary of Advent though we have only just entered into it. Perhaps because its spirit has lived with me for nearly six months now. And perhaps because, if there is ever a time that mothers will especially ache for and long for the presence of their children, it is certainly during this season.

I long to witness Song-Felicity’s face as the lights of her first Christmas tree twinkle. I long to see her as she tastes eggnog, or, as our little ones call it, “Christmas milk”, for the first time. I long to snuggle her by a fire in our fire place that her Daddy built. I long to tuck her in at night wearing the Christmas pajamas that each of her siblings wore before her and I long to arrange the blankets around her with my own hands.

Advent…the longing and the hoping and the waiting in faith for the Child whose arrival has been promised is upon us. And as tired as I am of this season of waiting, awaiting the Christ Child does make awaiting my own child a little bit easier. Because I wait in the awareness that He is already with her in the space and in the distance that create my waiting.

O come, o come Emmanuel…”God with us.”

God be with us as we endure this season awaiting our baby.

God be with Song-Felicity as You, Yourself, prepare her heart to receive us.

God be with her foster mother who cares for our child as her own until we can get to her.

God be with her China mother whose heart surely breaks eternally in our daughter’s absence

God be with children and parents everywhere who are separated from each other.
O come, O come Emmanuel!

Please, come quickly.