Miller Plus One

Since I am up at 4:00 a.m. due to lightning, thunder, and hail shaking the entire house, I thought this would be a great time to catch up on the blog.  Yesterday, we got the news that our home study is DONE and, after a few detail changes, it will be ready to e-mail to Taiwan!  After it is sent to our contact in Taiwan, it will be translated into Chinese, which takes about a week.  When we get it back after translation, the fun really begins.  We have to take the home study and several pieces of paperwork around to lots of different offices who verify each other and finally, it will be verified that Tennessee really is a state!  Then, we FedEx those papers back to Taiwan and we will enter their court system as prospective adoptive parents to Amber Joy.  It could be a few weeks to several months before we receive our travel date after the paperwork enters the courts.  We are prepared to wait as long as necessary, but obviously, we are praying that it is...

Last week at church, someone said "Congratulations!  I saw pictures of your daughter!"  My first thought was, "I don't have a daughter."  It is still very surreal that she is ours.  We know that nothing is final until we have her in our arms, but this time, it just feels like it's really going to happen.  She is 11,500 miles away from us, but somehow, everything keeps falling into place and we believe that Amber Joy will soon be home in Tennessee!  This week, we got a brief update that she has gained a pound in just two weeks!  She has a healthy appetite, a good set of lungs that can be heard all through the house, and according to her medical records from the hospital, she is quite the little fighter.  She has some medical and other issues still to overcome, but we are hopeful, simply because of the way she has rebounded so far.   I have found myself day dreaming about the time when we get her home, the days at the zo...

From May 17th... Friends, Thank you for your ongoing prayers! I am writing this at 11:30 p.m. because tonight, just like every night for the past 12 days, I have trouble shutting down my brain. We received a brief update today about our sweet baby girl in Taiwan. She is out of the hospital, not on oxygen, though she does have breathing treatments for her lungs since she was a preemie. She is taking 3 oz of formula every 3 hours like clockwork and seems to be thriving! The Taiwanese missionary says she has "quite a set of lungs." I would not expect any less from my child! An amazing "breadcrumb" of God's hand in all of this was something that happened this morning. Justin and I have had some debate over the baby's name. We had Amber Elizabeth picked out from the time we got married to honor both of our dear sisters. However, over the past few days, with everyone referring to the baby as "Amber," I began to realize that this was going to be...

Hi everybody, It's been a whirlwind of a week at the Miller house! The bottom line is that we have accepted an adoption referral (at least verbally) for a sweet, 3-month old baby girl in Taiwan! It was completely unplanned, as we have been on the path for a domestic adoption from day #1. However, God had other plans (usually does) and now, we are scrambling to apply for passports, update our homestudy, and begin educating ourselves on our daughter's special needs. Our daughter. Wow. She is ours! Amber Elizabeth was born in Taiwan on January 30. (There are still some undecided details about what her name will be...we are honoring both of our sisters, but we may add something that reflects her Taiwanese name). She was born at 26 weeks gestation to a birthmom who is 27 years old. Amber was only 2 lbs. On Friday, May 6, I got a phone call from my mother while I was in the toilet paper aisle at Target. One of my friends commented that at least I had plenty of tissue for the...

God has been talking to me about my lack of discipline in my spiritual life.  I usually do everything else I need to get done in the day first, then, if there is any time left (which isn't often), I spend a few minutes reading my Bible or a few moments in prayer.  Today, I got up, made coffee and a quick breakfast, checked the bank balance, then, instead of turning on the TV, I went to our den and spent dedicated time with the God of the universe.  Twenty minutes of silence followed by reading in 1 Samuel about Hannah: From The Message translation of 1 Samuel 1:1-19: "Penninnah had children; Hannah did not...Hannah was reduced to tears and had no appetite.  Her husband said 'Oh Hannah, why are you crying?  Why aren't you eating? And why are you so upset?'...Then she pulled herself together, slipped away quietly, and entered the sanctuary...Crushed in soul, Hannah prayed to God and cried and cried--inconsolably.  Then she made a vow: 'Oh, God of the Ang...

Today, I realized it has been over a month since my last post.  Most of you know that the birthmother we had been speaking to made the decision to go with another family.  It was hard.  It was weird and a different emotion than I had ever felt.  We had just started to put our toes in the water of hopefulness when we were forced to jerk ourselves back from the edge.  To make things tougher, during the week we had been speaking with the birthmom, she found out that the baby was a little girl.  I used to think I wanted a boy, and of course we will be ecstatic about any child who finds its way into our home, but the idea of having a little girl is a dream for lots of moms.  I think that I moped around for about another week after we found out this was not our baby, and then I began to get that glint in my eye again, remembering that, in the end, when I have my baby in my arms, all of this waiting and heartache, like labor pains, will just be a memory....

You would think that when we have a possibility of a conversation with a birth mom that it would have made the blog before today.  Afterall, I found out about this possibility this past Saturday...five days ago.  However, if there is one thing we've learned through this process, it's that everything has to go through the PROCESS.  There are i's to dot and t's to cross and we find ourselves being almost too careful at times: not sharing details, wanting to be vague, and waiting, even when we may not need to.  On Saturday, I received a message from an acquaintance telling me that she knows of a birth mom in another state who is interested in talking with us.  Even typing it right now makes it feel more tangible.  Up to this point, we have had trouble thinking of these babies as "real."  We can't see them, touch them, hold them, introduce them to our families, allow life to change the way it would if they were home...  Even though I'm consi...