Receiving the gift of Faith

The process of grief is much like the children's book "Going on a Bear Hunt". When the children run into obstacle's on their bear hunt, like long wavy grass or a big muddy river, the answer is always "we cant go over it, we cant go under it, we must go through it. Our grief, we realized was much like that. To begin to heal we had to go through it. We also knew we needed God's help. So we cried our tears and shared with each other our feelings of loss and disappointment. Then we asked for the gift of faith.
Because of the Sapp's on line blog we were able to watch from a distance the transformation in Natalia' eyes and her whole being. The photo's we looked at and loved for 6 months were of a tiny baby with a sadness in her eyes. As the Sapp's began loving and nurturing Natalia those sad eyes began to twinkle. It was in those twinkling eyes we witnessed the powerful miracle of love. Being able to see this miracle unfold before our eyes gave us such a feeling of hope, that our faith was renewed.
It was then we decided that our referral pictures should be shared with the Sapp's. In sharing our referral photo's with Chris and Michelle Sapp, we took that final emotional step of letting go. We emailed all the photos Orson had provided us of Natalia to the Sapp's because we knew they didn't have these photos as they met Natalia when she was just about 12 months old. Our referral photos were of a 7 month old Natalia. They were our gift to the Sapp's.
Today anyone who can read the Sapp's blog and view the montage of photos they have put together about their adoption journey, can also witness the same miraculous transformation of which I speak, as our referral photos (the youngest photos of Natalia) reveal her sad eyes.