My Husband's Daughter - Repost

(This is a repost from April of 2011, sharing one of the most important days in my sweet girl's life.)

That might seem like a funny title, but there's a story behind that. And heaven knows I love a good story. Especially if it's one of mine.

Some of you know that I was a single mama when I met my amazing husband, Paco. (You can read part of our story here and here.) It's been a journey, learning about God's forgiveness and grace and how He treasures each and every one of us.

Since we got married seven and a half years ago, we both desired deeply for Paco to be able to adopt Maggie as his own. At the beginning of our marriage, it looked like it would never happen. Mags' biological father just wasn't alright with that. We waited and prayed, prayed and waited.

About a year ago, God's timing began to show itself. It became apparent rather quickly that we would have to go to court to work all of this out. Again, we waited and prayed, prayed and waited.

And I cried. I cried tears of frustration and exhaustion. I cried out of fear that if anything happened to me, she could be taken away from her daddy and siblings.

Yet, patiently, lovingly, God pulled my wee grasping fingers off of this situation, reminding me that I wasn't in control. It took a while. A loooonnngggg while.

But in HIS time (meaning not Jamie's), He brought it all to an end. 

And with our hearts overflowing with joy, Monday, April 18th two days before Maggie's tenth birthday, we celebrated. 

Because now, she's officially what she's always been.

My husband's daughter.

Not only are we sharing the joy of earthly adoption with her, she's now understanding a little more what it means to be adopted by our Heavenly Father.

And if that's what this past years heartaches has been for...

then I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat. Because the joy outweighs it all.

This happened exactly one year ago today.  April 18th is Maggie's "G-day" (as in Gotcha!).  We have been so blessed to watch her grow and mature into a beautiful young lady over the past year.