Becoming Mom again SUDDENLY Post #22 12-3-15

Some previous post had to be only posted to our FB group. 
Post #22 
In about 1 hour, I am about to become mother to two Teenage boys from Africa. 

Surprise! 

God sometimes will provide opportunities to love someone else at the most unexpected times.  Because at one point in your life you told God that you were willing to love orphans and those wounded. The opportunities definitely do not come at convenient times or work around your schedule. That's for sure! Ha! But oh well! We will just go with it! 

Yesterday, I kinda had an emotional meltdown like when you are about to get married and all you want to do is runaway or quit or something! I had fears that I wasn't going to be able to mother these two. I had fears of rejection, of failure. But deep breathes and a call to a friend and all was back to being "normal" again. 

Funny, I know their name, but I don't know their birthday, I don't even know what they look like, but I do know I am willing to love them. This was a tenacious fight to seek justice for two kids these last few weeks, and God's kept his eye on them for some time. Glad they can experience something good for a while. I'm glad I get to see what God is gonna do in their lives.

Here We Go Again! Adoption Journeys 11 and 12!

Just when we are getting down to 5 kids at home, God is increasing our family size! LOL! We have not done a home study in about 7 years so I feel like a complete newbie! We have to start over from scratch as we are living in a new state  and an updated home study just won't work. 

HOW IT BEGAN

In July, two years ago, we suddenly had V brought to our home from a disrupted African adoption. (You can read the story HERE.) Within a couple of days we knew she was to be ours. Complications with state policies involving her final adoption has also prevented us from giving her the Carter name. It has been frustrating and disappointing to say the least.

Also, two years ago in May, I met a little boy, J while teaching at a women's conference in AFRICA, and we decided to pursue his adoption but so many roadblocks these past two years have prevented it from happening. We released him to God and decided to move on. 
( You can read more HERE) 

We are creating a  private Facebook group because there has been breakthrough for both children! We are so excited that God is doing some impossible things to allow us to be family to these two wonderful children. We have to keep the details of V's and J's process low key and where as I have always blogged publicly about our past adoptions, we need to do this one a little more privately.  I will put generalistic posts here on this blog but no details of our journey experiences. 

I assure you, we have always had adventurous adoptions and will need prayer and encouragement support from family , friends and the adoption community. smile emoticon

If you want to be part of this group, please FACEBOOK friend request me at  Melissa Ammons Carter and PM me to let me know you want to be added to the Secret Group.  I cannot add you to the group if you are not a FB friend. 

Blessings and Love, Melissa and Duane

Letting Go of Fear!

Some of you may not know, but we have two new additions to our family that we took in as a healing/transient home from a disrupted adoption through a private situation until another family is found for them that were adopted internationally. I've been sharing on FB some of our journey with the girls, but thought I would share here on my blog. This is a new phase in our lives and then again, we have been doing this for a while as the last two children added  into our family were from disruptions. This time around we know that we are a healing home for the children while a permanent family is being located. Through our adoption journeys of 17 years and 14 kids later, we feel like we are coming out of some training grounds on loving supernaturally.  Most of you who have known us for a while, know I share events and emotions openly because I feel that adoptive families need to identify with someone in knowing that the good, the bad and the very ugly is real and they are not alone in experiencing it. Some may criticize me for sharing details sometimes, but my kids know as well as I do that that nothing is hidden. Truth brings healing, not only to us but to others as well.  Jesus love and blood covers all. That being said, I want to start sharing little stories about healing, about restoration and about love. 
So, back to my story,
Needless to say there is some reactive attachment disorder resulting from past traumas, malnourishment, abandonment rejection etc. with these girls, We have been the recipients of child RAD behaviors before and frankly, so these behaviors were expected to surface. 

 The littlest has intense anger all deep inside and it just oozes. She is such a beauty inside and out and the enemy is trying to ruin her identity. That does NOT sit well with me. God has been so gracious in loving her. Its been intense but there is this beautiful peace that rest on us as we love this mad out of her. Yesterday and today we had some major breakthrough. I'll share a little bit. We had some break through tonight with the little one and her fear of going to bed. When asked why she was afraid to go to bed, She started telling us as well as she could about some bad experiences with a crib at night time. 

Thankfully, I followed the Holy Spirits leading before she got here and got her a big bed instead of a crib or toddler bed. Tonight we symbolically took that crib and threw it to Jesus who then took it to the garbage never to be seen again! The look of happiness and joy on her face was awesome! She grabbed my neck and hugged me like there was no tomorrow.
 I know it sounds cliche but I felt like God wanted me to tell her she was smart, she was kind and she was important. She just beamed! Earlier today, she was standing by me drawing on a table while I was printing something from the computer and we had some worship music playing -either Kim Walker or Misty Edwards and all of a sudden, she threw her hands up and closed her eyes in worship.

 It was so sudden and beautiful as this tiny 4 year old sensed God and just had to raise her hands for those 20-30 seconds and then she was back to drawing. God is so faithful in healing wounded hearts!