The Dream

I thought I would post the story of how we came to be on this journey. Jeremy describes it well in this story he wrote shortly after the dream he had. Enjoy!
- Lori :)
ps - grab some tissues if you haven't heard this story yet. :)

Feb 21st, 2006 5:19 AM
First off, a couple of notes about this story. Lori and I had been thinking about adoption ever since right after Tyler was born. I’ve had a heart for adoption and thought it was a great picture of what God did for us. Being accepted and adopted by God, giving us the same rights as Christ… that’s pretty amazing. At any rate, we talked about it for years, but after we had Jacob I felt that I no longer wanted to adopt. I had my 4 children and that was enough. I closed myself off to the thought of adoption. “Let someone else do that. I have my hands full as it is.” That was pretty much my thoughts for the last 3 years. During the last year though, several couples that we knew have adopted children from China. Lori had been interested in the adoption ministry at church but I told her not to think about it and don’t waste her time going to any meetings. Still, she had a heart for adopting and through various circumstances, felt drawn to Guatemala. She spent a bit of time looking into Guatemalan adoptions and was getting really excited about the idea, but knew that I was against it. She finally decided to stop looking into it because it was making her crazy and she didn’t want to spend her time investigating something that wasn’t going to happen. So, she told the Lord that if this desire was really from Him, that He would have to speak to me [Jeremy] about it. Well, she prayed that to God on Monday, Feb 20th. She never mentioned anything to me about it and I never knew she had a heart for Guatemala [for a 2-5 year old, long-black haired girl] or had done all of that research.
I never dream. Well, I guess I do dream I just rarely remember my dreams. I usually close my eyes, fall right to sleep, then immediately wake up when my alarm goes off in the morning. I also am rarely emotional, except when Forrest Gump runs out of his leg braces as a kid, but that’s a different matter all together. Lastly, God has never spoken to me in a dream that I know of. In fact, I think it’s kind of kooky to make major life decisions based on a dream. Lori has crazy dreams almost every night and if we made life decisions based on her dreams, well…. Let’s just say our lives would be fantastically bizarre. All that being said, I had a dream the morning after Lori prayed that God would speak to me.
I dreamt that my family and another family that I didn’t recognize were camping. We were sitting around the campfire and this little girl walked in to our site. She was about 3 to 5 years of age. We quickly concluded that she was an orphan and did not have a mother or father [not just "lost"] . We didn’t know what to do with her, so a decision was made to place this little girl into the back of a station wagon and place large rocks on her to cover her up. I remember being filled with anger and I’m not sure why. We closed the door to the station wagon and walked away. After several minutes, I was talking to the other man in my dream and told him that what we were doing was wrong. He said that I should do whatever I wanted, but he didn’t want any part of it anymore. I went back to the car and opened the door. I took all of the rocks off of this girl and when the last one was removed, she opened her eyes and smiled this huge smile at me. She said, “I knew you would come back for me! I knew that you really did love me!” At this point, I was overcome with love for this little girl. I was so ashamed that I had not wanted her around before. I picked her up and held her and I started to weep. I kept telling her that I loved her and that she could come live with our family. I told her how she could be Meghan’s sister and that we would take care of her now. She then starting saying something about D-Day and Omaha Beach and how her new Daddy rescued her. I’m not sure if that meant something significant was going to happen on June 6th, but I clearly remember her saying something about it. I was crying pretty hard now and actually woke up sobbing in bed. I couldn’t stop crying for several minutes. I finally got up and went to the rest room to compose myself.
I had woken Lori up at this point and when I got back in bed she asked me what happened. I recounted the dream to her and finally she asked me what the girl looked like. I said she was about 2 to 5 years of age, had long black hair, and had olive colored skin. I knew that she was not Chinese or Asian, but for some reason kept thinking that she was either South American, or Mayan in decent. Lori told me later on the she had been looking into adoption from Guatemala and had prayed that God would reveal His will to me. He radically changed my thoughts about adoption and I can honestly say that the dream I had was from Him. I’m now extremely excited about adopting, and I have total peace about it. I know that this is something God is orchestrating, so I know that somewhere out there, we have a little girl that will become our daughter soon. That’s pretty weird. We are just praying that we will not move ahead of God’s timing in our excitement to find our daughter. God will show us the way- I have no doubt about that.

[added by Lori]

I think this dream is full of symbolism. Here are a few observations:

* Covering her up because he didn't know what to do with her = His "plate was full" - so now what? But by NOT choosing to adopt . . . we are trying to cover her up, put her aside, etc, and this would, in essence, be sentencing her to death (possibly spiritual, emotional, physical, mental, etc).

* Taking the rocks off and "rescuing" her = Obviously it means adopting her! :)

* D-Day/Omaha Beach = At first I thought this may be the day we "rescued" her, or maybe it will be our referral date. Not sure. The date this year will be 6-6-6 . . . hmm . . . I don't like that number! :)

However, here are some interesting facts about D-Day/Omaha Beach:
(Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Overlord)

- It was part of Operation Overlord - the largest seaborne invasion in history. Omaha Beach was the bloodiest landing beach during that Operation. Troops were expecting an easy fight, but soon realized that the Germans had switched divisions a few days earlier. "Within 10 minutes of the ramps being lowered, the leading company had become inert, leaderless and almost incapable of action." It became a "struggle for survival and rescue". The fight for Normandy lasted until midnight on July 24/25 (the start of Operation Cobra) or August 25 (the advance to Northern France). *Hmm . . . does this mean the "fight" to "rescue" our daughter will be over around then?! :) *Just to let you know - the adoption process did end around this time frame . . . in 2007! We got out of PGN on July 25th (can you believe it?!!), and then (should have) gotten our pink slip around August 21st or 22nd! I say "should have" because the lawyer messed up. You can read that post as well.*

- Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe despite having little field experience (and therefore there was some controversy over this). [This is like our decision to go with A Helping Hand (see that post) - little experience with 0lder kid adoption - but chose to go with them anyways - per God's leading].

- There was controversy that Overlord would not succeed, and Eisenhower even wrote a speech, in advance, to take "full responsibility for catastrophic failure", if that happened. However, it was never used. D-Day became an invasion that turned the tide (changed the future) for the Allies in the fight against the Germans. *By rescuing our daughter, we are changing HER future!

I'm sure there are many more symbolisms - but it's late and I need to get some sleep. If you have any other insights - let us know! We'd love to hear what you think!
-Lori :)