Coyle Baby #3!

First, a disclaimer, NO! we are not pregnant!  But we ARE up to our eyeballs in adoption paperwork!!!  We've taken one of the greatest leaps of our lives and definitely of our marriage!  We may not be a perfect family (clarification: are most definitely NOT a perfect family) but we are a willing and excited family.  We are parents that LOVE children and had difficulty getting pregnant and even more trouble staying pregnant.  We are parents that ACHE at the thought of an estimated 147 million babes going to sleep around the world without people to call parents.  There are so many quotes, scriptures, statistics, I could write about why we're pursuing adoption.  But the bottom line is that we believe it's where we've been led as a family.  We believe that He will write a story of redemption -- of beauty from ashes -- both for the parents who longed for children and for the child who longs for a family.  A story that will be difficult and painful but deeply full of His grace for us.  Oh, I have my fears, the kind that keep you up at night.  How will this impact Luke and Amelia?  How will we come up with the estimated $30,000?  What will it practically look like to have an interracial family?  These questions are valid and important and must be handled with honesty and grace (and humor too!!)  One day at a time.  But for tonight, I believe that He is hard at work writing a story that will have difficult chapters but a beautifully redemptive theme.  We learned a thing or two about patience through infertility and bed rest.  Our journey in learning how to wait will continue because right now, adoptions from Ethiopia take an estimated 2-3 years.  So we will wait and pray and hope and dream of our new little one ... meanwhile we'll notarize more forms than I can count, get dozens of references and background checks, get busy on our education requirements and try to complete our dossier (legal documents that go to the Ethiopian government) as quickly as humanly possible.