A Week of Thanks: Day 7

This year, I am especially thankful for HER.

I do not delude myself: a lot of stars and planets and miracles both major and minor had to line up in order for everything to work out the way it did. A whole lot. Our adoption was easier than most, but it was not without its perils. Probably the most dangerous of these were our own personal issues, our heavy baggage, the bullshit we dragged with us back and forth to Allentown and back -- no, to hell and back -- to get through this. More than once we talked about calling the whole thing off. Not because we didn't want it, but because we wanted it so much that we couldn't bear it if anything went wrong.

It didn't, of course, and there are a lot of people we need to thank for that. Shae deserves most of the credit, because she is just so supremely awesome -- and I know that's a cheap and almost tacky word these days, "awesome," but it sure does describe this kid, doesn't it? Every day I am filled with awe at how amazing she is. How much like me, and like her Daddy. How much like her grandparents, all of them, how much like this entire family our little girl is. When we decided to adopt, we knew we didn't want to "select" a child from those available, but instead we decided to wait until the right child found us. Boy, howdy, it's astonishing how that happened, isn't it? Awesome, even.

Still and all, we would not have gotten through the past year and a half without the phenomenal support of all our family and friends. We are especially grateful to the folks at Catholic Charities at the Diocese of Allentown, who gave us a chance when there were other agencies who might not have, and who kept us fighting for what we knew we wanted from the day we got The Call. More still, we need to acknowledge our old family friend and lawyer Lisa, who handled things for us in court, and my cousin Jessie, who suggested we give this foster-adopt thing a try in the first place. To all of you: THANK YOU. For everything.

But mostly, we are thankful for our beautiful, wonderful, fantastic, awesome Shae. Whom we loved before we even knew her, and who we will always love, always and forever. Amen.