Telling the Story

It's been about 36 hours since we became a family of four. (Or a family of 7 according to Josh. You cannot leave out the guinea pigs and the dog. That's just wrong.) As you can well imagine, we are reeling, not to mention sleep-deprived. How do you go from a family of 3 for over 7 years to suddenly having this new little person in the house? A new little person who had adjusted to a different home for his first six weeks of life? Who doesn't really know us? Who has just the clearest bit of uncertainty when he gazes at us? Who has already suffered two losses in his little life?

Of course, there's a back story here. A period of time during which we learned about him, got to visit him, spent lots of time talking about the "ifs" with this specific little boy. A period during which we stayed silent publicly but privately processed and prepared. As much as you can, anyway.

Now that there are no more "what-ifs" in this story, now that he's home, we are excited to tell the story. We won't share every detail due to privacy issues in the adoption process and out of respect to his birthparents. But we are delighted to share the important parts, the journey home of our Nathaniel Jaceyon and how we felt along the way.

And before telling the bigger story, why the name?

Nathaniel means "gift of God" and Jaceyon is the name given to him by his birth mother. Putting the names together, we knew we would always be reminded of God's goodness in this gift to us and his birth mother's brave decision and love for him. That was really important to us. No matter how much she is physically a part of our stories from this point on, she is inextricably linked in a powerful way to our family. We wanted him to know that truth when he is old enough to process his story.

So, over the next few weeks, I will post that story of this little man becoming a part of our family. It has been quite an emotional ride for all of us and the coming home is just the start of our family's next chapter. We are so grateful for the ways our friends and family have rejoiced with us so far and look forward to when they will actually meet this precious little man in person.