Just Getting Started

I prayed for this… for years. I prayed for our adoption, for our kids, to be a mom, to grow our family, over Colombia, over the bio family our kids would end up losing in order to be placed in our family, over who our kids would be and how the Lord would use us as His hands and feet to show them His love.

In the last weeks and days before we left for Colombia, my prayer became one that the Lord would give me, us, a story that would testify to His goodness and bring Him glory. I thought I knew what that meant, but that was naive of me. I had no idea that the way the Lord would answer that prayer would mean that I would enter into the absolute hardest season I’ve yet to walk through with Him. While this journey and our adoption over all has been filled with the most wonderful and abundant gifts from our Father, it has also held some of my darkest moments too. And I think ultimately, this is why I started this blog and this website... because I want other adoptive mamas to know that it's ok to feel like this is hard. It's ok to feel like you're in the trenches. It's ok, and you'll be ok.

Adoption exists because of loss. Our kids have faced an unbelievable amount of trauma in their short lives and that meant that once we began our new chapters together, there would be work to do to build trust, attachment, and love. And to be completely honest, that work is something the enemy doesn’t want to happen… and so he did, and does, everything he can to keep it from moving forward, and spiritual warfare is no joke. But when I look back at what the Lord has done, when I pause to see the miraculous work He did in even in the tiniest of details, or how He has rescued each member in our family (including Jake and I) out of the mud and mire to set us on solid ground… I can confidently say, “My God has not failed!”

There are many dates that will forever be stones of remembrance for our family that the promises of the Lord are true. He places the lonely in families (Psalm 68:6). We can sink down in the depths more than we ever thought possible, and still He is there (Psalm 139:8). He has rescued us from ourselves and the brokenness of this world (2 Corinthians 5:17 and 2 Timothy 1:7). And that ultimately it is not about the act of adopting humans, but that we have been adopted by Him when we know Him as Lord and Savior (Galatians 4:4-8 and Romana 8:14-17).

There are so, so many stories to be told of the goodness and faithfulness of our God, and in time I hope to write them all and share them in this blog… but today? Today I want to start by showing you those first moments when we were finally together as Casa de Sanders.

con mucho amor,

Hanna