Those who come along side us..

It wouldn’t be fitting to continue Hope’s story without introducing the Dollyhigh family. They’ve played a big role in her adoption story, and yet, we’ve never met them. When we were moving into our log home back in September of 2009, we decided that our white wicker furniture just wasn’t going to work in our new master bedroom. In the house on Baskins Circle, we had a beach themed master bedroom with large paintings of the beach, and white wicker furniture. Not exactly the rugged lodge look that a log home requires. I found all of our wicker furniture in second hand stores, and on craigslist. We found a “new to us” king size log furniture set that was perfect for our new mater bedroom at our new house. So, I listed our wicker furniture on craigslist.
I received a few calls on it, but one call in particular was a divine appointment. A lady called me asking if I’d be willing to split up the dressers as they couldn’t afford to purchase all of them. We began to talk and one thing led to another. We found that we both homeschooled our children, and I learned that her husband was a pastor of a small church about an hour away from where we lived. I happened to mention that we were in the process of adopting a little girl from Thailand, and that really was interesting to her. She confessed that she had been really praying about adoption, but had no idea where the money would come from to complete the adoption.
At that point, we believed we were close to travel. Of course, I had no idea we were still over a year away from actually bringing Hope home. However, I was able to share with Marianna how God had met our every need up until that point, and how I had every confidence that He was going to continue to do so.
Chris and I prayed about it, and decided that the wicker furniture needed to be given to this family as a blessing from the Lord. We were not at our old house the day they came to pick up the wicker furniture, so our neighbor had to show them the rurniture, and so we actually never met them.
Today, Trent Dollyhigh is landing in Atlanta with their son from Africa! They are bringing their daughter home shortly. Marianna will make the trip to bring their daughter home. They both went to appear in court and meet their children. They had to leave them in Africa while their paperwork was being processed. These children are not biological siblings, but God is much bigger than biology. We have been so blessed to be a part of their story, as they have been a part of ours!
We do plan to meet sometime soon. After the holidays and all the kiddos are home, and settled. God is so AMAZING!!