Threads

We don’t accomplish anything in the world alone and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one’s life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that create something."
— Sandra Day O'Connor

It is amazing to watch how the common threads of our lives weave together to create miraculous events in ways we could never have imagined.

Last year around this time, I started a new thread in my life with an incredible woman named Lisa. She was a fellow blogger, mom to a beautiful girl with Down syndrome, and was on her journey to another beautiful girl with Down Syndrome on the other side of the world. I was so captivated by her journey and would often talk about it with my husband and friends.

I vividly remember the day I saw this picture on her blog. I remember sitting at my computer and I wept, and wept, and then wept some more. Then I told others about it and wept some more!

Here was this innocent little girl cast out of society for having an extra chromosome. This little angel had been dreaming about what it would be like to have a family and after 3 long years of waiting, SHE had one. Falling asleep with her family in her arms.....a dream come true!

Little did I know that this journey of Alina's to her family, was going to one day help another little girl, find hers. It was through Lisa's blog that I found Patti. Patti quickly became another thread weaving through our lives leading to Kareen. Yes, I had already felt impressed that maybe we were supposed to adopt, and that maybe it was supposed to be through Reece's Rainbow, but I had not had the strong confirmation of who, until I found Kareen's sweet face on Patti's blog.

As I scrolled down the page and Kareens picture came up I sat there with tears rolling down my face as I looked into those big beautiful, captivating eyes, and the song playing on the playlist was "Ordinary Miracle", and I knew she was meant to be mine. I knew those eyes were staring into my soul saying "Mom, I need you to come and find me"

Then a a few days later I came upon a post on Lisa's blog titled "Just say Yes"

Again, there was my girl reaching out to me and these were the words under her picture

"Don't wait any longer. Please, if you are considering adoption, choose today to commit. Say yes today."

Once again, the threads had weaved in a way that gave me yet ANOTHER answer to my prayers.

One week after this we committed to our girl!

Patti had been brewing up something fabulous on her blog a month or more before we found Kareen there. This amazing woman, the mother of 10 children, the youngest of which has down syndrome, felt inspired to help a little girl named Olga from Reece's Rainbow.

(Olga's forever family is now coming for her too)

So she started advocating for Olga and started raising money for this sweet girl. She was so successful (she raised $12,000) that the director of Reece's Rainbow asked if Patti would add another angel to her list to help. One who was in danger of being transferred soon. That one, was Kareen. By the time I found Kareen, Patti had already raised over $3,000 for our little angel. This was just the beginning of a great connection with a fabulous lady!

As we went through the commitment process, I often talked to Patti, via email and we were both so excited to finally be able to "announce" that we were Kareen's family. You see Kareen had accumulated quite the following of fans, through Patti's fundraising and she had even more "prayer warriors" out there. The prayers of these people, came straight to our hearts and opened our eyes to what the Lord needed us to do.

Patti and her children were all connected to Kareen so when she told them Kareen had a family they all cheered with excitement, and cried. As Patti and I talked she said "wouldn't it be great if we could meet Kareen someday" thinking this was probably a far fetched dream. As we talked we realized that Patti lives in Oregon and my family has traveled to the Oregon coast every summer, or at least every other summer, since I was in high school. So we cried together as we dreamt about what that day will be like, when Kareen gets to meet her prayer warrior and advocate who helped save her. We cried thinking "of all the people in the world, what are the chances that we would really have our paths be able to cross someday?" So we are already planning our trip to the coast next year and Patti (and any of her friends there) will be a stop on that trip, and what a sweet meeting that will be.

When we announced that we were Kareen's family, we were flooded with love and support and words of encouragement and congratulations from SO many of Patti's and Lisa's friends and family who also held a little place in their hearts for this darling girl. We are grateful to each and every one of them!

Not only did Lisa's journey help me prepare for what was going to come, she has also helped me in SO many ways through this process! She has become a confidant as I emailed her in the early stages of this decision, and I think she knew even before I did, that we were going to commit to Kareen. She gave me support, love, has answered MANY questions, I have gone over her adoption journey many times as Alina was from the same country as Kareen, and I could not have made it to this point without her.

You HAVE to go HERE to see today's post by Lisa celebrating Alina's birthday ! I could not stop crying reading this today! It touched me a little too close to home right now as I picture my little girl so alone right now, but very soon will know what a family is all about. She will know that she is loved and that she is worthy of love and she will blossom, just like Alina! Love it!

The paths that are lives take and the threads that they weave are amazing to see. Sometimes we see how these threads and paths are forming and why, and sometimes we may never know. As we have been on this adoption journey we have been blessed to feel the love and support from many threads of our lives coming together to help weave a new path and a new tapestry for a special little girl. Some threads started long ago like this, some are more recent, some since birth, and all of them (along with SOO many others) have weaved together and have become a part of Kareen's miracle and a part of our tapestry and we are forever grateful!