Christmas Blessings


It's been more than a month since I last posted. The past month has been amazing, with an awesome Christmas with my family and an amazing life changing trip to Honduras. I have so much to post, so I will try to post several times this week. Christmas brought a bunch of unexpected surprises. For starters, my family is amazing, and they really made this Christmas special for Nate and I as we find ourselves in a waiting process for the adoption. Christmas morning we always eat breakfast together, go around the table and share what we are thankful to God for in the past year, read the Christmas story, and share presents. This Christmas, at the end of our time, my mom said she had a few things to share. What Nate and I didn't know was that our family had been preparing a few surprises. My mom, who is the most amazing mom in the world, decided to make me an "Expecting Advent Box." Because it is hard to even explain all that she shared, I am posting the letter that she read to us Christmas morning, describing this gift. Here it is:

Dear Ang,

When Nate married you about 10 years ago, and Lorie, in her toast told him that he’d be on the roller coaster ride of his life, little did either of you know that the events of the past few years would be part of this up and down journey. Everyone in this room around this table have deeply grieved with you and rejoiced with you over the open and closed doors that God has led you and Nate through. We have seen you grow and mature and begin to anticipate, with a sense of nervous excitement, this latest challenge and blessing that God has bestowed on you.

You have often said that one of the hardest parts of the past few years has been the “waiting,” in various aspects of this process of your desires, and expectations, and God’s will. So your crazy mother has developed a plan to get you through the challenges of “waiting” in this next phase of your life over the next 12-15 months. From the day that your dossier finally goes out, I want you to consider yourself…”EXPECTING!...YOUR MIRACLES!!

And this box is your “Expecting Advent Box” and will be one of the first things in your “Hope Chest.” I have written letters to 50 women who I believe care deeply about you and Nate and asked them to write notes of encouragement, and advice as you enter into this last phase of waiting. Each month (or about every other week) you will pull out one note to encourage you in your “wait.” And your sisters, Rob and Sarah and I have committed to send you something each month to put in your hope chest as you experience the next month of waiting and EXPECTING!

My prayer is that you will grow and be as blessed in enjoying and experiencing this box as I have been in preparing it. The letters are tremendously warm, deeply heart-felt messages of love and encouragement for you and Nate. Some of them have been birthed in their own arms of pain and growth. You and I have both struggled in our respective places of living with regards to friendships and relationships. But as you read these, I pray that you will realize, as I have, how tremendously blessed we both are with people who care about what we care about.

What an amazing gift...I can't wait to open the first one. Thanks for being an extraordinary Mom!

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