our strawberry!

"For this child I prayed." 1 Samuel 1:27

On June 1, we received one of the best calls of our lives after 2-½ years of praying and waiting for our little girl! Our caseworker called me and said that a file of a little girl surprisingly just came through and she asked if we wanted to see the file. I said yes to receiving the file, and then Ian and I waited all day long until he got home from work so he and I could view the file and video together for the first time. As soon as the video began, it felt very clear to us that this was our little girl – a prayer that I’ve had since the beginning. In the video, our sweet girl had on little purple overalls. Back in December 2016, Gavin randomly said to me that he thought Strawberry would be wearing red. After viewing the video file, we opened the written file on her, and there was a tiny little photo of her wearing red! God is good! Our dear friend, Esther, had also told me that she specifically prayed earlier in the week that we would receive Strawberry’s file THAT week!

Like most things go with adoption, we then had to wait. This time we had to wait for her official file from China so we could be officially matched. We were told this normally takes 1-2 months, meaning we should receive the file by the end of July. My soul craves and thrives on outlines, timetables, and deadlines. Unfortunately July came and went, and the time just kept ticking by. August was hard. Really hard. Now that we were outside of the timeline that was given, I felt worried. The kind of worry that makes you feel sick and you’d rather ignore it completely. I began to question if we would ever really receive the official file – especially with the current political climate and with China in the midst of changing some of their adoption policies. August rolled into September, and still no word of the file. It was a huge reality check for me that we are not in control. All I could do was think about how our little girl was getting older without us. I prayed without a great deal of conviction that God would continue to help me trust even when the fear was rising up within me.

Finally on September 7, we received the phone call that Strawberry’s file was officially in!! We could now move forward with the adoption process! This was such an incredible day, and we were filled with so much joy. Receiving this call at a point when I lacked the most faith during the entire 2-½ year adoption journey showed me something really significant. God provided Strawberry's file out of His goodness, not because of anything I did or had control over. He is in control. And He loves her more than I can comprehend in my human capacity – just as He loves each of us.

At this point, we are knee-deep in paperwork, and preparing for travel! We should be traveling in December or January. However, we won’t know the exact dates until 2 weeks before we leave.

As you might have guessed, adoption is super expensive. During our adoption process, Ian and I created an adoption fundraising page through adopttogether.org. Some family and friends have expressed interest in being part of the journey to bring our daughter home through a financial gift. We are extremely grateful for this generosity. Adopttogether.org is a crowd funding adoption site and gifts are tax deductible. If you’d like to take a look at our page, you can check it out at https://www.adopttogether.org/keelerfamily.

As we continue this journey to bring our Strawberry home, please continue to keep she and our family in your prayers. Our precious little girl will turn two on October 16. We pray this is the last birthday she will ever spend without us. As a side note, we first started this entire adoption journey around the time she was probably conceived. And she was born on a day we’ll never forget – we were driving down to Siesta Key as a family and we had a huge cloth luggage carrier strapped to our roof that rattled like thunder for 18 hours straight as we drove through the night. We feel so thankful we can actually look back to that date and remember exactly what we were doing on the day she was born.

Thank you for your prayers and for taking this journey with us. Also, if you have ever considered adoption, please don’t hesitate to contact us if you want to hear more about the process or about our experience up to this point.