Baby Bella

I know many of you are watching my blog for news on Baby Bella and what is going on with her. So here is my heart poured out to all of you right now.

Baby Bella may very likely be leaving our family for good this next week. Her maternal grandparents would like to take her to live with them. What makes this difficult is they did not want to take her at birth, but have recently changed their minds. I realize that everyone has the right to change their minds, but when you are dealing with emotions and an innocent baby it makes it very hard for me to swallow. We all go to court on Thursday morning and the judge will hear the case. We would like to continue to care for her until her mom can reunite with her. We are asking God's will to be done here on earth. We are pleading for His peace and as His will unfolds we know He will meet us right where we are.

As you can imagine this departure has come much sooner than we were prepared for, so we are dealing with our feeling of sadness right now. Throughout this journey people would say to me, how are you going to say goodbye? My response was that we were taking this one step at a time and that I had faith that the Lord would meet us at our need and help us. I was right... God has been faithful to allow times of sadness and tears and times of complete surrender to His will, times of pure anger and disapppointment. I have asked that God give me His perspective so I can stay above the emotions when that is necessary. I need to let the tears come, but there are times when I just need to be strong.

This sweet little lady came into our lives and has truly blessed us. I have seen my children grow as they have willingly given of their mama and daddy, their time, their space, and their attention and love to this baby. Thomas and I took this step of faith and I am so glad we did. I remember when Baby Bella was about 6-7 days old I cried most of the day. I was dealing with the fear of loving and then hurting when she went away. I was expressing my feelings to my mom and her response to me was to go ahead and love her because no one else was loving her tangibly right now. I expressed these same feelings to my friend Kimberlee and she gave me a very sweet little outfit with the word LOVE ME on it. Well, I fell for Izzy that day and allowed myself to pour into this little one. I have no regrets. I wouldn't have wanted it any other way, because I know I can send her off with full assurance I have given my all and more to care for her, love her and nurture her. She has experienced more love, more care and more prayer in her short little life then most children I know.

It looks like our little butterfly is flying away sooner then we had hoped, but we stand fast in our belief that God goes with her and we will continue to love her and pray for her.