New bloggy title, and also LENT!

Thanks, readers! I knew you were out there, and I'm feeling the love. Maybe there are more of you? I realize that not everyone had a four-hour nap window yesterday to check MY blog, but if you are still lurking out there and want to make your presence known (please), feel free to comment here.

Thanks for the title thoughts. While I agree with the reasoning expressed by Paul, OSB (who happens to be my cousin...Hey Cous! How's Rome?), I quickly threw out any ideas that dealt with being "picked" because I'm a little uncomfortable with how that image appears to adoptees. If I was an adoptee, I would wonder why I had to be "picked" in the first place and what was so wrong with me that my first mother placed me in a position to be selected by another couple. We were "picked" by Olivia's birthmom to be Olivia's parents, but more than that, I think God just placed us all in each other's path to bring this family together. God can bring amazing things out of a less-than-ideal situation, and I've never doubted His hand in Olivia's adoption. Still, the image is difficult.

In pursuit of a new title, I went searching for Catholic quotes. (What? Isn't that where YOU get inspiration?) This is the one that inspired me.

Love consumes us only in the measure of our self-surrender. -- St. Therese of Lisieux

I let that sink in. After some thought, I decided that it would fit. It fits our family in that it took a great deal of self-surrender for us to open up to the idea of adoption, and then the idea of adopting a child of mixed race.

When we first planned to pursue adoption, we had discussed interracial placements and decided that we were not prepared to parent a child with African-American heritage. We had read lots of stuff on both sides of the debate, but I guess we were just a little intimidated by the warnings against becoming an interracial family if you live in a lily-white world. I read about the "bead exercise" in which you place a white, brown, yellow or red bead in a jar for every white, black, Asian or Native American person you associate with...at Church, at your job, in your family, in your network of friends. Our hypothetical jar was looking pretty darn white. Everything we read seemed to warn us against this.

Then we got the call about Olivia's birthmom. Her match just fell in our laps and we just looked at each other and said, "OK, we're open." We were excited and joyful and filled with anticipation...and fear. But we were absolutely certain that God had placed this in our hands and we needed to say yes.

It was, of course, the best thing we ever did. And we have never looked back.

So, with homestudy #2, we decided that we would be open to any race and would consider being open to other possibilities (physical/mental disability, etc).

How did we get from Point A to Point B? We realized that from the moment we saw Olivia for the first time, we were totally and completely consumed with love for her. The circumstances of her conception and birth were totally irrelevant. She was being entrusted to us...our precious child. That, alone, was enough to make us surrender our preconceived notions of our perfect little family and embrace the family that was being offered to us.

So, that's the reasoning behind the title. The url is the same, but if you have honored me with a mention in your blogroll, you might want to update the title.

Lent is here. I hope to write about our Lenten discipline tomorrow or Friday. I have decided to give something up and also add something to our routine that I think will be helpful in establishing family prayer habits (important now that Olivia is old enough to join in). Do you have any Lenten resolutions?