Look at all these beautiful faces!!!  If you bought a shirt or shared our campaign on social media this month, thank you SO MUCH!!!  We sold 163 shirts and raised $1938.89!  We are completely blown away.

I took some time yesterday to sort of get my head around our adoption stuff again.  While our girl is never far from our thoughts, we hadn't thought about money and deadlines and fundraisers at all these last two weeks.  I knew we had made progress, but I wasn't sure exactly how much.  

Almost unbelievably, when I totaled up all that we have saved, raised, or been given, we have enough money for not one, but three major milestone payments: all three payments due before we are eligible to apply for grants.  

These hurdles felt impossible, and yet we are clearing them.  We are three steps closer to having our baby girl in our arms, and this happened during weeks when we could hardly move our feet at all.  I cannot tell you how thankful I am for you, reader, and the ways you are proving to us that our hope is not in vain.  Thank you for reading, praying, cheering, giving, and sporting your shirts while we work To Get Her, for good.   We love you.

Saturday of last week was a good day as far as fundraising goes.  We had a yard sale and we sold Sno Cones at a community event to raise almost $400.  I went to bed that night exhausted, and planning a blog post to tell you guys about how awesome you are and how we can feel all your prayers and cheers.  

I never wrote that post, because as you probably know, that same weekend my brother Adam lost his long and courageous battle with depression, PTSD, and mental illness.  

I can't even begin to write about what I feel and think about all that my family has experienced in the last week, both terrible and wonderful, both tragic and comforting.   Maybe one day, but not today.  Mostly what I want you to know is that we can still feel your prayers and cheers, especially during small pockets of peace we experience each day.   And that we are still choosing to believe that God is working things together for good, even though it has never hurt more.  We pray God will make beautiful things out of the worst possible thing: a family losing a son and brother, a child losing their family.   We pray that this fundamental hope will not disappoint.    

Beautiful Things
Gungor
All this pain
I wonder if I'll ever find my way
I wonder if my life could really change, at all
All this earth
Could all that is lost ever be found?
Could a garden come out from this ground, at all?
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us
All around,
Hope is springing up from this old ground
Out of chaos life is being found, in you
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us
You make me new,
You are making me new