Nine years ago today a young woman went into labor 15 weeks early. She was scared and told not to expect to hear a cry from her too-little one. This wasn't the first difficult aspect of her pregnancy. Earlier she had already made the difficult but selfless decision to make an adoption plan for her baby. She had chosen a single mother from out of state. However, when that adoptive mother learned that her soon-to-be son was born at 25 weeks gestation, weighing only 1 lb. 13 oz., prognosis unknown, she decided not to follow through with the adoption. At this point we still knew nothing about this little boy.
We did, however, receive a strong promise from God, "Don't worry. Your little one will be victorious." Not knowing when that baby would arrive but believing the promise was for him or her, we waited. A week after April 13, we received that now infamous email from a caseworker in Utah, "I know this is a long shot, but..."
Every adoption box that we checked as "No", God had switched to a "Yes." It still took us another week to make the "Maybe" a "Yes" and Victor Noah was 2 weeks old by the time we met him. On that day, the NICU nurse took a laminated and sanitized dollar bill and placed it next to our son for what was to become a yearly tradition.
And that boy grew and grew and grew. None of this journey has been easy, but we cling to the victories we have seen, and we continue to pray for the ones not yet seen.
Happy birthday, Victor Noah King! May year nine be filled with every Star Wars conversation you desire, may you understand a little better the love we have for you "no matter what," and may you continue to grow in wisdom, and stature, and in favor with God and man.
