Never enough time......

For those who don't know, my father (Gregory Lynn Beasley) passed away suddenly last Thursday. The news was devastating as he was a relatively healthy 62 year old man. As I was driving to Austin arguing and pleading with God, I had an overwhelming sense of peace come over me. What I was arguing was not fair, God put in perspective for me..... You see, my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer exactly 4 years ago this month. He was given 4-6 months to live and he very quickly began to get sick. Pancreatic cancer is almost always fatal, but my dad was determined to beat it. He was determined to live to see his grandchildren grow, to see my youngest daughter Emma be born, to spend more time with my sisters and I. As his body began to wither away from the cancer and the chemo, my dad's will stayed strong and he fought..... Oh he fought!


In January 2006 he had a procedure done called the Whipple surgery which in and of itself was life threatening. They went in and removed every organ or piece of an organ that had any contact with the pancreas. They removed part of his liver, half of his stomach, his pancreas, sections of his intestines, and so on. I spent a few weeks with him at MD Anderson as he began to recover from the surgery. The surgery was a success and my father was without cancer. I believe that he was healed by God..... not through some flash of lightening, but through the doctors hands. So from that point on, my entire family had a renewed appreciation for our time together and our relationships with one another. My parents are divorced, but after the cancer we spent every Christmas together and every Thanksgiving. We no longer took for granted the short conversations we had and we never failed to say "I love you".


Fast forward to last Thursday..... My dad passed away suddenly from a pulmonary embolism. He died immediately and I was angry with the Lord for taking my father. As I was beating my steering wheel and sobbing uncontrollably, God spoke to me. I asked God why he didn't save my father and He said that He did. God saved my dad 4 years ago and he blessed our family with 4 wonderful years together..... Four years to say everything we wanted to say and do everything we wanted to do. God's gift to us was 4 years of with my dad and I would take those 4 years with a close loving relationship over 100 years of regrets and taking each other for granted.


This realization didn't make me miss my dad any less and it didn't make the pain go away, but it gave me peace. Many people.... most people take life for granted until something like this happens. We didn't do that and although my dad's life was too short, his legacy will live on. You see, I was adopted as an infant and I believe that my being adopted is what planted the seed in me to adopt children of my own. As Leah and I push forward to complete our adoption of Elisa and Vanessa, I thank my father for making the choice to adopt me 33 years ago.


I love you dad..........

Bad Blogger.......

I apologize, but we are horrible at updating our blog. Sometimes we get so caught up in what we're doing that we forget to update all of you who are following our journey. We've made great progress in the last few weeks though. Our home study was sent to to the USCIS offices and we are waiting on them to set up federal fingerprint appointments for us. We've completed our dossier with the exception of 3 documents. We will need our mortgage verification when we finally move in to a new home, we need to get our medical forms redone by our doctors, and then we need to wait on our INS docs once our federal fingerprints are complete. The timeline for the USCIS is unknown, but we are hoping and praying that they turn our paperwork around quickly so that we can submit our dossier.

We've also been approached by a number of people lately asking us if we're going to do another fundraiser. With the money that Tony's work will reimburse us and the savings we have, we're about $8K-$10K away from our goal which is amazing considering we've only done the one event. Honestly, we had not planned on another fundraiser, but it may be necessary. Either way, we know that God will provide whatever is needed to bring our babies home. Oh..... that reminds me that we got new pictures of Vanessa from someone who had recently visited her orphanage. It was so inspiring to see her precious face a full 6-9 months older than she was in the original picture we received. Here's our sweet baby only from just a few weeks ago.....

It's amazing how we can get LOST in "the process" and loose sight of what the end goal is. That goal is to get these babies home to us so that we can give them the love and medical attention that they need. We are so excited to be over halfway there! We can't wait to hold our girls for the first time.... to kiss them for the first time.... and to see them smile for the first time! If only we could travel to get them today! So we press on with renewed energy and excitement about what God has in store for us. We still hope to be traveling by the end of summer........

Homestudy Complete!!

We finally received our completed home study which moves us to the next phase of this process...... the dossier. It's amazing that we've been at this for nearly four months now and our progress is summed up in a 13 page home study document. Many of you are probably aware of some pending changes in adoption policies in Eastern Europe that could have an impact on our adoption of Elisa and Vanessa. We are more motivated than ever to push things forward as quickly as possible so that we don't miss our window to adopt our girls. Despite the potential delays, we still have a tremendous peace about everything. It's cliche, but God's timing truly is perfect and we know that He is in control. So with everything finally moving forward with the adoption, where do we stand with the rest of the chaos?

Tony has still not heard about the Atlanta job, so we are proceeding with our lives as if we're staying in San Antonio, but are also fully prepared to move if necessary. We close on our house this Friday and are staying at a friends guest house for a short period. We spent all weekend cramming our belongings into large storage containers sitting in our driveway. Your truly realize how much "stuff" you have when it's time to move and we definitely have a lot of stuff. All in all, things are going well. We finally see an end to the craziness that we've been experiencing over the past few months. It's crazy season like this that make us truly value the quiet and "ordinary" seasons of our lives. Oh how we long for ordinary right now! Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers and for your wonderful support!