Lily's Baby Dedication

While we were waiting and waiting to bring Lily home, something that I dreamed about was the day when we would have her baby dedication at church. On more than one occasion while I was sitting in church tears came to my eyes just thinking about that day. The day we would finally have the gift God had given us in our arms. The day that we had fought and prayed and hoped for. And the day we would take the precious gift God had given us, turn around, and give her back to Him.

One of the many reasons we wanted to adopt from China was because Christianity is illegal there, and we knew that the chance an orphan would hear about the gospel was very slim. We wanted to not only give a child a hope and future here on earth, but an eternal hope and future as well. By dedicating Lily to God, we are vowing to raise her in the Christian faith, teach her His word in the Bible, and raise her to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

One of the things that I love about baby dedications at our church, is that each baby has a verse selected for them based on the meaning of their name that is prayed over them and framed as a keepsake. Lily's name means pure, innocent, beautiful, and her verse is Phillipians 4:8 "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things."

After Pastor Steve presents Lily with her verse and asks us a few questions about our intentions to dedicate her to God, he and Kristin and the entire church pray for Lily and for us. We were so blessed to have many friends and family members there to share in this moment with us, and we really appreciate all of you! It meant so much to share this special day with you. It was so neat to finally be standing there, in front of our friends and family, with this precious child, and see a prayer answered and a dream come true.