Saturday, March 29, 2008

The Long Awaited Gift

Today, I was privileged to get to go with my brother, Brent and wife, Marian to get their new baby girl. She is beautiful and this was, by far, (with the exception of the birth of my own children) one of the greatest experiences of my life. We started out this morning at 7:30 and made it to Florence by 11:30. We stopped at Burger King to relax and take a break for a few minutes. We then went to a church where we met the birth mother's counselor. There was lots of papers to sign. Then... the moment we had all been waiting for... the arrival of the baby.
I was the first to see her because I just couldn't wait and I wanted to perfect picture of the reactions of everyone. The baby was turned over to Marian and she started to scream. Everyone tried everything to calm her down and finally after taking her to a nursery, she fell asleep. They came back and a short ceremony with scripture reading and prayer followed. The scripture that was read by the birth mother's counselor was Jeremiah 29:11. I can't really go into why this verse was special but it made perfect sense. Then my brother read Ephesian 1:5 "He predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will." And then they said a prayer. This was just an awesome time and now I have a beautiful new niece. And without further delay...


Tess Elizabeth Martin

Isn't she beautiful? I can now officially say, "Welcome to our family, Baby Girl!"

5 comments:

Michelle said...

What a beautifu story. I have tears in my eyes....I've been checking your site all weekend waiting for this moment. There is nothing in the world compared to having a child. We had trouble getting pregnant and almost took this route too. I just think it is so awsome that this girl cared enough about her little girl to give her as a gift of love to your brother and wife... What a wonderful gift to your family.....

Welcome Tess!!!!

Unknown said...

How cool is that??? Jer 29:11 is one of my favorites.

About the music, here's how someone explained it to me... and I somehow muddled through! If I can do it, a monkey can!

Go to Playlist dot com. You'll have to sign up. Search for the type of music you want and make your playlist uniquely yours. After you've made it, you should see that in under your playlist is a link that says 'post your playlist'. click there.

It will take you to a page that has "Where do you want to put your playlist" with five different options A. - E.

Choose E. Get the code for any other social network, blog, or own personal website...

Second step, you will need to choose which playlist of yours that you want to get the code for. If you have only one, click on it.

Third step, it will ask questions like auto start, shuffle, and color. Answer those and then click on get code.

Step four, copy all that gibberish in the box and go to your blog.

Now while you are at your blog, go to customize. This should take you to template. Click on Add a Page Element on your side bar. this will bring up Choose a New Page Element box. Choose Text and click add to blog. I put "What Lifts Me Up" in the Title and then pasted the gibberish in the content box. Click save changes and then view blog. Your playlist should appear on your blog.

Can't wait to see what you play!

Jodie | Velour said...

She IS beautiful!! Her sweet face breaks my heart. :)

Also, thanks for visiting my blog - and for delurking to leave a comment. ;) I love to "meet" new friends in the blogosphere. I'll come back and peruse later... right now I gotta get some shut-eye!!

Hugs,
Have a great week!

Name: Jenni said...

Congrats to all of you! What a beautiful story and a beautiful little girl!

ThriftyMommy said...

Congratulations. Adoption and/or foster parenting is probably in our future.