Monday, July 16, 2007

Bizarre, yet Beautiful

It has now been a few months since my wife and I have begun the process of adopting our child from, India. The process has been a relatively smooth one thus far, “Thank you Jesus”. Things are really beginning to fall into place and progress is being made. I just need to share a few things that have been happening to us since the process was begun.

My personality is such that I am not easily “freaked out” or emotionally charged. I usually don’t get overly hyped about neat things, nor am I unimpressed about things. I just generally take things as they are. However, since our adoption process has begun Amy and I have seen some crazy things take place that I cannot deny are COOL. This week, during a couple of brief stints at our local Publix supermarket, the cool factor went to another level.

To fully understand the situation, we live in a pretty large city in North Alabama. Yes, this town is pretty culturally diverse, but it is still a city in North Alabama. From the beginning of the adoption my wife and I have seen several families and individuals of Indian descent, way more than usual it seems. There are plenty of races and nationalities represented in this city, but the ratio of people from the Indian descent that we are coming into contact with is very obvious to us.

My wife has decided to log every occurrence like this that we have experienced since the process has begun. We thought it would be great to share these occurrences with the child once he/she is older. She is even listing reminders such as Indian news headlines that pop up on the front pages of MSN or Fox News. The list is already an impressive one. It’s really neat stuff. After this past week and weekend she has a couple of new ones to add to our list.

Friday night, we were near the bread section of the supermarket and low and behold there was an Indian family with two little girls in a buggy. The oldest girl was probably 4 or 5 and the youngest was 2 or 3. Well, of course we always look briefly (trying not to stare), especially at the children because they are such a beautiful people. We just don’t want to freak the parents out. Usually they never know we have glanced at them and smiled. However, this time we both looked and the older girl made eye contact first with Amy, then me. An odd feeling came over me. I told Amy later that it was almost like a 6th Sense feeling (if you’ve ever seen that movie). I can’t explain it though. We carried on as always and completed our shopping and chalked it up as another occurrence similar to the ones before, but different.

Sunday night, we decided we wanted some sushi, so we made our way to the seafood section of the store. This time, we walked past the aisle right before the seafood section and there was another Indian family. They were dressed in their cultural garb from head to toe. They were at the end of the aisle headed toward us. They had a few items in their buggy along with a baby. Amy poked me as we walked by and I said come on and lets get the sushi and we will see them as they come around the corner. We wanted to see the baby. Anyway, we spent about one minute at the most, deciding on the kind of sushi we wanted and headed around to see if we could see them. We walked down a few aisles in both directions, and then headed for the front of the store. They were gone! We were quite confused, so we walked the entire store again in an attempt to find them and they were nowhere in that store. For the first time, I was really scratching my head began to think there were more to these meetings than coincidence. I understand how long it takes to walk to the front of the store from where we were and check out. It’s more than a minute in a half to do that, trust me.

So, at this point, Amy and I are praying that we begin to realize what The Lord is trying to show us through all of this. Is it a confirmation that what we are doing is in line with His will for us? Is it something more? We aren’t sure yet but, we pray that these reminders do not stop. It is too cool!!!