Skipping ahead a good 5-6 years after we'd been married, we had both graduated college, work was going well, Micah and Isaac were growing, and we were enjoying life.
Beau woke me early one morning with tears streaming down his face, telling me he'd had a dream. Now, just for the record, Beau is not an avid dreamer. It's a pretty rare occasion he ever even remembers his dreams. But this one rocked him, as it was obviously more than just the random Freudian wish fulfillment type dream that is the norm. It was a beautiful glimpse into our future given to us by God. We truly believe that.
With his permission, I share portions of his dream. The first part of the dream involved he and I sitting in front of computer screen full of faces of Asian children. He knew they were all orphans. A second portion of the dream involved us going on a plane to China. He said there was a group of people waiting to meet us and they were happy to see us arrive. And in the third part, he saw a girl. A Chinese girl. She looked to be about 6-7 years old in the dream. And he knew she was our daughter. Our adopted daughter. We both sat together in wonder and amazement....and we wept. We didn't see when this was all going to happen or how it was going to come together. But we knew it would.
At the time of the dream, we knew we weren't yet ready to jump into the adoption process. We couldn't afford adoption or to even travel to China but we held onto that dream and wondered for years how it would play out. For me especially, who had always wanted to adopt, it was quite a shock. I had always thought of adopting through the foster care program or a domestic adoption. There are plenty of children here in our own country that need homes. I'd briefly thought about international adoption, but my heart had always been drawn to Africa or South America. Asia had never even entered my mind and, honestly, had never been a culture I was interested in. But the dream left us with no doubts. I remember as we talked about the dream that day and the days following how I kept saying, "I'm so excited to see how this is all going to come together. I know all things are possible but I can't imagine how this is going to play out."