Happy Birthday Sammy!

Today is Sammy's 2nd birthday.  I have been thinking about what I want to write about Sammy on here for months now.  And I've been tempted not to write anything at all because of the "baby book problem" that I referred to a few posts back.  You know, I want the blog entry to be perfect and to not leave out any details, to capture the love that we feel for Samuel and for God (for how he gave us our little Sammy).  So because I know that I will not be able to perfectly express all these things, I've been close to not writing at all.  I know, it's terrible, but I'm trying to get over that little problem I have.
But because Sammy is more special than my own desire for perfectionism, I will write about the miracle that God did in giving us Samuel, it's all about how good God is and how his plans are always better than we can imagine.
Some of you already know Sammy's story, but some of you don't, so here it is.  Checo and I decided we wanted to have kids, and we thought it would be that easy- just get pregnant, and 9 months later, we would have our first child.  Well, it wasn't that easy.  I had 4 miscarriages and the doctors could not find a cause.  I had several tests done, but the results always came back that everything was fine and functioning correctly.  During this time, it was very hard and trying, we wanted a baby so badly, and every time we find out it was another miscarriage, we were heartbroken.  You see, each time I got pregnant, I had hope that maybe this would be the time, but God was always in control, and He knew the plans He had for us (hint, hint: Sammy!!!).  So after the 4th miscarriage, a friend of ours told us about a woman who was pregnant and wanted to give the baby boy up for adoption.  We had always talked about adopting, but we thought that it would be later on, after we moved to Mexico.  But since this friend told us about this opportunity, we prayed about it and felt God's peace about pursuing the adoption.  We only had a few months to get all the paperwork done.  We squeezed all the work of what usually takes 1 year or so into 1-1/2 months.  In order for us to take the baby home from the hospital, all the paperwork had to be done with the social worker and lawyer before the baby was born.  Thankfully, everything was ready and we were just waiting for "the call", that the mother was in labor.  To make a long and painful story short, the baby was born and we were there at the hospital for the birth, but the mom ended up changing her mind....she did not want to give us the baby in adoption.  Another heartbreak.
We knew that God was good and that He was in control, but it was so hard for us.  We didn't understand why.  That's usually the way it is when we go through difficult times or trials, we don't understand why, but that is when we have to remember these verses from the Bible in Proverbs 3:5-6:  "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And he shall direct your paths."  You see, God sees the whole picture, He knows what we've been through and where He wants to take us, all we can see is the present (and the past), but we can't see the future and the plans He has for us.  Our vision is limited, so that's why it's best if we trust in the Lord with all our hearts and lean not on our own understanding.  At that time, all we knew was that the birth mom just changed her mind, after all the the times she had reassured us that she really wanted us to be the parents for her child.  We thought that this precious baby was ours, but God knew what he had in store for us (hint, hint: Sammy!!!)  That day was April 21, 2008.
2 weeks and 2 days later....May 7, 2008.  I was back at school teaching and when the day was over, I noticed I had a voicemail on my cell phone.  It was our adoption lawyer's office, asking me to call ASAP.  I returned the call and the lawyer told me that a baby was born the day before (May 6th) and the mother did not have an adoption plan in place, but wanted to give the baby up for adoption....and would we want to adopt him?!?!?!  Of course!!! We had to write a "Dear Birthmother Letter" and email it to the lawyer by that night and then the next day he would take our letter and another couple's letters to the birthmother and he would let her choose her son's new parents.  We were so excited, but we didn't want to get ahead of ourselves, we knew that the mom had a choice between us and another couple.  We waited and didn't tell anyone our news until we knew what her choice was.  So the night passed, and May 8th rolls around.  1:40pm: I was at school and my cell phone rings in my pocket....the caller id said, "LAWYER".  I stepped out of the classroom, my body was trembling as I said hello.  It was Crystal, the lawyer's assisstant, and she calmly told me that the birth mom chose us and that we needed to get to their office ASAP to sign some final papers, and to make sure we had a car seat in the car.  In shock, I said ok, and hung up. Then it hit me...make sure we have a car seat in the car!!!  This means that we are going to be taking our baby home! 
Checo and I made it to the lawyer's office, signed the papers and then he went to court to get the papers made official (so that we could legally take the baby with us).
Around 5pm we arrived at St. Joseph's Hospital in Tacoma and we met precious baby Sammy for the first time.  Oh, it was so wonderful!  We had already decided after the 2nd miscarriage that if our first baby was a boy, we would name him Samuel because of Hannah in the Bible, who was unable to have children.  She cried out to God, asking Him to give her a son.  "So it came to pass in the process of time that Hannah conceived and bore a son, and called his name Samuel, saying, "Because I have asked for him from the Lord.""(1Sam 1:20)
So we had our Samuel.  We had asked the Lord for Him, just like Hannah, and he heard our prayers.  He answered our prayers in exactly the way He had planned.  Our ways are not always God's ways.  His ways are much higher and better than ours.  As we look back and see how God intricately fit everything together so that Samuel could be our son, we are amazed and awed at His handiwork.  If I hadn't had all those miscarriages, we wouldn't have started the adoption process.  If we hadn't done all the paperwork with the social worker and lawyer in order to adopt the first baby, we wouldn't have had everything ready so that we could take Sammy home within 2 days of his birth.  If a family wasn't found that was completely ready to take Sammy home from the hospital, he would have went into foster care.  We are so thankful that God had it all planned out, and although it was painful when the 1st mother changed her mind about the adoption, it was the only way that we could have adopted Sammy so easily and quickly.

On May 8th, 2008, we took Sammy home and he's been with us ever since.  Thank you God for Sammy!  In a couple days I will post some pics of that first time we got to see Sammy in the hospital!  This is already way too long to put more pics on, I might have already lost some of you, I know.