Sleepless.

It's 3:51am as I sit here at the kitchen table, unable to sleep despite my exhaustion.  A smile is on my face, a private kinda secret half smile, one that reflects the quiet and unrelenting joy that's in my heart about our three-child status.  I suspect my eyes are smiling, too, though I'm scared to confirm that in the mirror because I'll doubtless also see the sleep-worn, bagged out eyes that have been greeting me for the past couple of mornings.  It's a peaceful, awesome feeling that lives in me right now.  It feels exactly like I thought it would throughout those years of waiting.

In the coming few days, I'll blog about the weekend leading up to Monday, and the events of Monday itself when we got the call.  I'll also blog about the doctor's consult that we have this afternoon with the international adoption doctor in Edmonton...I'm really wanting to get this call behind us so that we can have a few questions answered and then get down to the business of finally and officially accepting our referral.

The more I think about everything, the more I realize that, in little things and in big things, God heard the  innermost thoughts of my heart in the events that unfolded.  For sure and without a doubt, he heard the really big desire of my heart: for siblings.  But he heard, too, the things I'd dreamt and hoped about that I'd mostly left unspoken.  Just a bunch of little things that would have been fine if they'd happened differently, but that God knew were important to me.  Like a silly little thing about wanting to be in the privacy and familiarity of our home when we got the call; like really, secretly hoping that we'd have a boy and a girl, despite my fear of the certain hair issues I'll have (lol); like daring to be more specific to wish for the boy to be the older of two and not too far from Matthew's age, but not so close either that Matthew would come to question his first-child status (which was important for us to preserve); like really and truly hoping that, despite the broadness of our 0-63 month sibling request, we wouldn't receive a referral of an infant or one-year-old because I privately feel just a little beyond the baby stage already with Matthew being six and a half and me not getting any younger; like hoping the overall age spread between the kids wouldn't be too big because I'd always wanted children fairly close together in age and had been panicky about Matthew getting older every month.  There were a few other things, too, that I'd whispered to God from the quietness of my heart, particularly in the days before we changed our child request from siblings, to one or two.

And God heard all of the things that I hoped and prayed for from the bottom of my heart, and answered them one by one:

• I was at home when we got the call...had just arrived home about fifteen minutes before the call came.
• Our referral was for a boy and a girl.
• Our little boy is twenty-one months younger than Matthew...just perfect!
• Our youngest is neither an infant nor one year old...she's two, and will be three in five weeks.
• The overall spread between all three kids is 3.5 years - so they are close together in age!  In fact, just like Matthew is 21 months (and eight days) older than his younger brother, so too is his younger brother 21 months (and 21 days) older than their little sister.

And I just can't get over the fact that Matthew has been so committed, from the beginning of our Ethiopian journey, to the idea that we would bring home a brother and a sister for him...and that the boy would be the older of the two.  It's been his constant, taken-for-granted, prayer: that God would bring us news of his brother and sister; that his brother and sister might come home; that God would protect his brother and sister and give them enough food to eat and clean water to drink; etc etc.  When we changed our request, in June, to being open to one or two, he tried several times to get his lips around the words that God bring his brother home soon, but he just couldn't seem to do it, and so he simply stopped trying and resumed his prayers for his brother and sister - it was utterly natural.  When I told him through my tears on Monday that he had a brother and sister, he barely even looked excited beyond the thumbs up and the single word that came out of his mouth:  "awesome."  The accompanying look was one of "well, duh, silly - of course I have a brother and sister - and it's about time."

I know that not everyone believes in God, or even in the existence of a God.  I get that.  And I'm no more deserving of these children than anyone else - so many families are waiting to create or complete their families through adoption and I'm in awe that this time it's our turn for a referral.  God is real for me in these events, though.  These days magnify for me the personal aspects of our relationship, though it's caught me off guard again.  Why is it such a surprise to me that the One who knit me together in my mother's womb would know my innermost longings, the cries of my heart, the wishes of my darkest hours?  Why am I so surprised that the God who gave us Matthew also heard my further heart-wrung longings and cries?  We have experienced three distinct miracles.  I am astounded by God.  Utterly awed...again.

And with that in mind, now how am I supposed to sleep?!