SOPHIE’S JOURNEY PART 4

At the end of October a shift happened. I was praying one day and instead of my usual, “Just wait and chill out” answer from God, I felt strongly I was to call Liliana’s foster family. Liliana lived with an amazing couple, James and Nikki, while we were waiting for paper work to go through. James and Nikki are a retired couple who live on a ranch called Mercy Ranch. They were both in the medical field and now volunteer doing medical missions and also devote their lives to helping unwed mothers. Their ranch is open for girls who need love and family. J lived with James and Nikki after she delivered her first son. She did not have support from her family, so they took in her and her son for a year. When she left their house, she started up again with the wrong crowd and got pregnant with Liliana.

I thought James and Nikki may know what was going on with J.
We found out that “baby sibling” was a little girl named Sophie. We found out that J was not doing well and that the girls were in some at risk situations, some of which were caused by D.

My prayer life began to change and I knew I needed reinforcements.
I had a group of people that often asked about our adoption and were committed to pray. So, I began e-mailing and explaining the situation and asking for prayers from a team of people. I knew Chris and I needed more prayer than we could do by ourselves.

I also went into pro-active mode.

We were planning a trip to visit family in Texas, so I called Carol to arrange for us to meet J & D. We knew J would not sign unless D did, otherwise he would have full custody. We also knew that J would not talk to D about it because that was a source of fights and aggression. D still had not processed the adoption with Liliana, even though he willingly signed papers. He was in jail during her adoption, so he never had the chance to meet us and we knew he was raw from that adoption, much less considering Sophie’s adoption.

They both were glad we initiated a meeting. We met D, J and Sophie along with Carol for lunch. We were at the restaurant for over 3 hours . They had a chance to find out how Liliana was doing. She was not with us at lunch, but they asked tons of questions and we had recent pictures. It confirmed to J that she made the right decision to place Liliana for adoption and she was so happy to hear how things were going. D shared his struggles and Carol did an amazing job of walking him through his healing process and how to handle his grief in a healthy, rather than aggressive, manner. D shared with us that he was facing another sentence in jail and it was just a matter of time before he would be caught. He seemed to want to spend as much time as he could with Sophie because he knew it wouldn’t last long.
After talking to us, D knew it was the right choice for Liliana, as hard as it was for him. It was a positive meeting. Chris and I felt like it was good for both of them to see us and hear about Liliana and be reminded in person how much we love her. We knew it was a matter of time before D went back to jail and that when that happened we would be entering the next phase of our journey.

And of course we got to meet Sophie for the first time. She is beautiful. She has dark hair and brown eyes. She is more petite than Liliana and so sweet.
We took a picture of our time at the restaurant and when Chris got home he made it the picture on his cell phone screen saver. (I have to admit; when I saw his phone I got jealous and asked him to put it on mine as well). Every time we made a call or checked the time, there was our sweet little Sophie.