So, this is Advent

Fourteen years ago this week, my husband and I were in Guangzhou, China. We had met our older son there just a few days earlier when we became his parents through the gift of adoption.

One parent had to make a trip to the American consulate there, so I volunteered to do that. I had handled most of the paperwork. I left our 2-year-old and his father hanging out at our hotel, and I rode the bus with some of the other parents in our group to the consulate building.

I don’t remember what meetings or paperwork were involved that day. But I remember that when we were finished, we were standing in the lobby together, waiting for our bus to pick us up, and I had a sudden thought.

“I wonder,” I said aloud, “whether the next child we will adopt might already be living in China right now.”

It was so strange to have that thought right then. John and I had just become parents—and the first days as new parents are full of challenges no matter how that happens. We were exhausted and overwhelmed. We were also completely in awe of our son, full of love for him and excitement for all that was to come. But it was a peculiar time to be thinking of growing our family.

Even as I said it, I realized how odd it was to have that thought at that moment in our parenting journey. But I couldn’t quite shake that thought.

We completed our time in China and traveled home, and the days turned into weeks and then months, and then more than a year. When the time felt right, we started putting together our application to become parents again. But there was never any particular goal for when to bring another child into our family. We just knew we wanted our son to have a sibling—and we knew time wasn’t slowing down.

I don’t remember thinking back to that moment in Guangzhou, when I had that idea, until the day we got the call that we had been matched with another little boy.

I was scrambling to write down the details—his name, where he was living, and his age—when I stopped our social worker.

“Wait, that’s his birthday?” I asked. “We were in China when he was born!”

She had put that together, too.

That day when I had that sudden thought, the child who would become our younger son was newly born and not far away. Only God could have known that. Only God could have seen the ways that our lives would be intertwined. Only God would know that I would be wrapping gifts and picking out a cake for a boy who is turning 14 tomorrow. Only God can write these stories.

Only God.

As we begin this second week of Advent, we encounter readings that are full of God’s love for us and call us to look into the future with faith and hope. With Christmas coming up so quickly, I wish sometimes that we could pause Advent and live in the waiting a little longer. Especially this year, Advent simply doesn’t feel long enough.

But I like to remember that God sees the full picture, and that he is urging us along toward something even better than we can imagine—just as he was whispering in the ear of a new mother 14 years ago on the other side of the world.

Ready or not, with our second candle lit and burning, here we go.

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