Happy Am I

Warning this is a long post!
It is amazing to me how the Lord continues to play such a strong roll in my life. I am hopefully learning that giving up just isn't an option. If I can stick it out and continue faithful I will either see His "No" was for a greater purpose, or His "Yes" is now an obvious blessing from Him.
One of my greatest desires seems to be coming true. The best thing is that I know that it is being granted through the will of my Heavenly Father. Miracles do still happen.
Remember how I said to so many of you how it would be a miracle for me to adopt Jaren? I mean we were fourth in line. Well Monday while I was at work, I received a call from Misty (the foster mom of the other 7 siblings) congratulating me. I asked her why I needed to be congratulated and she told me that Jaren's parents had missed their mediation hearing and DCFS was petitioning to add his name with his siblings to revoke the rights of his parents in a hearing in May. (One down)
Just after the hearing the case worker recieved a call from the Aunt in Illinois who was working on a background check and home study to adopt Jaren. She asked to have her name removed because her husband wasn't feeling good about it. And she didn't know how stable their marriage was anyway. (Two down).
Previously the two case workers over Jaren and his siblings, the therapists, supervisors and CASA all met to determine if Jaren should be placed with Misty and his 7 siblings. After weighing the pros and cons they decided it would be better for the two older brothers to not have to continue to worry about the younger siblings. The committee hopes that by placing Jaren in another home the older brothers, especially Alex, will learn to trust in adults again and then not wonder what will happen to future siblings their parents may continue to have. And Misty already has 15 kids at home! (Three down)
Misty told me that they would be asking Kurt and me to adopt our little boy. She reassured me that she has seen this many times before and I would be adopting Jaren in 6 months.

I've often wondered how I would react to such news. I look back to just 5 months before and see how free and fun Kurt and I were. We had the life. No finding baby sitters, sleeping in, taking off when we wanted. But at this news I fell to my knees and bawled. I didn't want that life anymore because a little someone had me all whooped. Luckily I had found a back room to cry in for a moment before regaining my strength to call Kurt. The Lord had answered my prayers at a time I knew it would take a miracle for us to be considered.
When I called Kurt and told him what Misty had just slammed on me he was pretty skeptical and told me to talk to the case worker first. When I got home I had the case worker on speaker and she confirmed everything with more detail and asked Kurt and me if we would be willing to adopt Jaren because they would like to proceed with that at the hearing in May. Kurt had to answer because I was crying, but luckily he said YES! We were going to be parents!
When the phone was hung up. We stared down at the little sleepy body that would soon carry our name. Name! Should we change his name or keep what we've been calling him for 3 weeks? None of the names we had liked from the past seemed to fit. Liam, Nash...nope, nope. A name would have to wait. I was too excited to tell the family. I needed more prayers to keep this my way. :)

That night we started back up on the name thing again. Grant? Drake? Ander? Cash? Jaren? Nothing really seemed to be clicking. Finally Asher was suggested and it stuck. Kurt looked it up and found that Asher is the 8th son of Jacob in the Bible (Jaren is the 8th kid in his family) and that Leah named him that because it means happy and when she picked him up she said "Happy am I." The more we read about the tribe of Asher the more we fell in love with the name. It was perfect. How "Happy" are we to be given such an opportunity to continue to love this tiny little guy that I have just been smitten with since the first time I peeked through the blanket on his car seat carrier.
So for now we have settled on Asher Jaren Johnson. We won't actually get to adopt him until he has lived with us for 6 months, which will be August 8th. That day will not come soon enough :)

Introducing Asher Jaren Johnson our "Happy" baby

PS - For those of you really wondering. We did find out that Asher's mom does have some Native American blood in her but the kids don't have enough to belong to any tribe.
Thanks forever and ever for your support and prayers. This will all be worth the crazy ride.