Merry Christmas

This post doesn't really have a point or a message, but it's just my thoughts from tonight, and I had to write them down somehow.

8:35pm. I get into my car, tap the voice activation button my steering wheel, speak into the microphone overhead with a firm "bluetooth audio". My car recognizes the command, chimes, and starts playing the music on shuffle.

First it's some Lonestar. The new single is great. Fun and fast tone, all about driving cross country to the girl he loves, with a play on numbers: "It's just five more miles, four streets ahead

Three stoplights till I, I get to the one". 

Second up: Skillet's Comatose. Edgy, hard guitars, loud and in your face about having a life for Christ. "I hate living without you, Dead wrong to ever doubt you, But my demons lay in waiting, Tempting me away, Oh how I adore you, Oh how I thirst for you, Oh how I need you, Comatose

I'll never wake up without an overdose of you"

And as the road winds and falls on the hour drive in the dark back home, the music mellows out, and then all of a sudden Third Day's Merry Christmas comes up. This is where my thoughts begin, thanks to the songs inspiring my posts.

This song has a bit of a backstory. If you haven't heard it, click on the video, listen and keep reading: 

You see, my family is really cool. We have my dad, mom, myself, sister Emily, and Hannah. An American family of five. The difference? Hannah isn't like us. She's not the same skin color, hair color, and probably even as she gets older, height. She's adopted from China. Here's the first photo we ever got of her.

We spent years filing paperwork for a little girl that, at the time, wasn't even born yet. Why? Because we wanted to save a life from a country that would otherwise let her grow to be 14, then kick her out on the streets with literally nothing but a name, or she could have been aborted due to China's strict laws on the amount of children a family could have. 

As we got closer and closer to finishing the adoption, the band Third Day came out with a Christmas Album. As fans of the band, we had to get this CD. Mom, Emily and I were in town one day and we stopped at Target, picked up what we needed, and got the CD as well. As we're sitting in the car getting ready to leave, I pop the CD in, and hit the song that doesn't have a familiar title. I'm weird like that. I skip the classics to find the new stuff. Anyway...the song starts playing, and as we drive out of the parking lot, the three of us completely lose it.

Why? Because literally exactly like that song, we're sitting here in America in our huge SUV, fast food soda cup and all, while my little sister is in some orphanage alone. Without a mom or dad to hug, a Nativity scene to look at, or tree to decorate, or Christmas eve service to go to and sing with everyone else. She was in a crib with not much to play with, and without a family that loved her at the moment. 

Flash forward to July two years later. 

This is the video of the trip. Come back up here after reading and enjoy a viewing of it. 

We're on a plane to china to get this girl that's now our family. We spent three weeks in China visiting her homeland, and a few days into the trip, she's ours. We first see her coming off the elevator scared to death, because this is the first time she's ever been outside the orphanage. Factor in a multi-hour bus ride to where we were in China, and the first time she's ever seen a white person, she was practically mortified. But over time we all got used to each other, and now four years later, she's running all over this house, being a happy five year old who won't stop doing cartwheels from her gymnastics practice, or waking me up on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons with her (big brother had to teach her the classics of Tom and Jerry). 

And what got me tonight on the way home, is that I'm now twenty. I've been on this earth for two decades, and she's only been here a quarter of that time. I have a car payment, insurance, college books, gas, and more to pay for. I have a girlfriend I'm in a incredibly serious relationship with. I've been stressed out of my mind lately about everything, and worrying too dang much about everything going on with work, family drama, how to afford things, and more. Hailey, my girlfriend, even pointed out a single grey hair in my beard the other day. 

But on the drive home, as the song finished out, I couldn't help but think of hannah. This five year old girl who has my heart wrapped around her tiny little fingers, and can get me to do anything for her. She has no fear of the world, and just wants to laugh and watch Disney movies. And I couldn't help but pray for her parents. Not my parents who are now hers. But her biological ones. I pray for them because they more than likely will never know what she's doing here in the United States. They won't know she got reconstructive surgery on her cleft lip and palate. They won't know that she's excelling faster than anyone else in her class at gymnastics. Or how she is obsessed with quoting Tangled, Brave, Aladdin, and Finding Nemo as she watches them. But then I thank God for the blessing that my family got to receive this little girl into our lives, because now, I can't ever imagine life without her. She's the most beautifully innocent little girl who laughs at my cartoon voices, argues with my other sister over sharing the bathroom (even at five years old, yes, this happens), and gets on my parents nerves for knowing how to turn the Wii on and play video games when she's supposed to be sleeping. And I thank God every day for her now being a part of our family. 

My little Nan <3 p="p">