Our J man had been living with us for a couple of months by the time his first birthday rolled around. When planning his party, I remember thinking that we needed to go EXTRA hard for his party since it was going to be the first time his life has ever truly been celebrated. Since we were going celebrate his birthday the following Saturday, we decided to have a low key family day on his actual birthday by celebrating with dinner and ice cream. We went to have ice cream at one of our favorite ice cream places and at the table next to us sat a family of five, whose youngest child looked about the same age as our J man. The little boy was banging his spoon on the table, had ice cream all over his face, and was fussing at his parents because he wanted to get out of his high chair and play with his older siblings. I remember looking down at J who was a couple of minutes into one of his many, many daily seizures while being fed through his NG tube, and with hot tears streaming down my face telling Dustin, "THIS is not how it should be. THAT is how it should be."

Today is J man's fourth birthday and our first time celebrating his birthday without him in our home. In December 2018, J man left our family and went to live with another primary-medical-needs-foster-home in the Dallas area. We were able to celebrate three birthdays with J but in each of these celebrations, grief and loss were always present shadows to the day. Each birthday reminded us of the horrific things that had happened on the day of his birth and each birthday reminded us of the milestones J wouldn't be hitting that year. But through his birthdays, we learned that celebration and grief can and sometimes do co-exist. And today's birthday celebration was no different.

Dustin and I woke up talking about J and both missed him something extra today. We went out for ice cream to celebrate his birthday, as we have done for the past four years on this day. But instead of talking about all of the things J can't do and more than likely won't be able to do this year, Dustin and I spent the time talking about all that God has done and continues to do through the life of the little boy who can't do.

A few months prior to J leaving, I decided to spend time off social media because I was beginning to feel like a complete fraud. I would start to write an Insta-worthy sweet post of our family but deep down, I was angry, exhausted, stressed, bitter, running on fumes, and TOTALLY jealous of the pictures of all of the healthy kids and happy families that I was seeing on social media. The therapies, the vomiting, the fussiness, the explosive diapers, the seizures, the doctors, the medications, the sleepless nights, the medical supplies, the NON-STOP rocking we had to do to prevent him from SCREAMING every day from 2 pm to when we gave him his sleep medicine at 7 pm were all starting to take a toll on my mental health and our marriage. I truly felt like I had failed everyone in my life. I had failed my husband and Foster because all of my physical, mental, and emotional efforts were being put into Baby J. I had failed Baby J because I was completely worn out from being his caretaker while getting no recognition back from him in return. I had failed my friends and family because I had no extra energy to give to those relationships. I had failed myself because I had completely abandoned all of my own aspirations and dreams for being a stay at home mom to this.

But as hard as some of the days were, the decision for him to leave our home was even harder. We know that God's heart is toward the orphan, the lowly, those that are dismissed by society, and as followers of Jesus who are His image-bearers, we wrestled with how choosing to remove him from our home could accurately represent God's heart to His people.  We disagreed, we cried, we prayed, we got angry, we fought, we cried some more, and we prayed even more. And after months of being on our knees in prayer, Dustin and I both arrived at the same decision. We brought him into our home with the expectation of adopting him but after two years of fighting for adoption, we felt like the Lord was calling us to do something else: to let go and trust Him. We spent six months looking for an adoptive family for our J man and up until the day that he left, we had NO idea where he would go or if we would ever be able to see him again.

I can't wait to hopefully share more details of his story one day, but all of our fears and "worse case scenarios" that we had played out in our heads were erased when we walked into the foster family's home. The family was AMAZING and we were overwhelmed by the peace we felt and relieved that our little boy was going to a loving, kind, clean, and safe home. We moved to San Antonio for a couple of months and remained in regular contact with J's foster family and were even able to visit him whenever we could sneak away for a couple of days.

About two days after he left us, I received a call from a woman who had seen J man's "Wednesday's Child" video. Fast forward nine months and Baby J is now living with that family as they actively and excitingly pursue adoption for J. Dustin and I receive WEEKLY pictures and updates of him and in every single picture and video Baby Boy has the biggest smile on his face. It's as if he knows he is finally home. The family is completely bonded and in love with him and has made sure that we know we are more than welcome to go see him ANY time we wish. Oh, and did I mention that ALL of the GI and sleep issues that we battled for two years have miraculously stopped. According to his new foster-soon-to-be-adoptive-mom, he is content, happy, AND sleeping through the night! WHAT?!?!

So tonight, instead of spending his birthday reminiscing and talking about J's accomplishments over the past year (and there is NOTHING wrong with this -- just last month our girl turned TWO and we spent the evening ooing and ahhing over her), Dustin and I got to reminisce about how God has provided for us, provided for J man, and provided for a family who longed for a child and somehow beautifully woven all three of our stories together.

Having Baby J in our home changed our lives in so many ways and we praise God every single day for how He used such brokenness to radically change EVERYTHING for our family. We are more appreciative of our support system that rallied around us, as we have family who would drive 7 hours to give Dustin and I a much-needed date night and friends who would randomly drop off muffins or gift cards or cookies in our mailbox when they knew we were in a rough patch and needed a little encouragement.

By seeing the tragedy and devastation of sin through the unbelievable amount of suffering his body has experienced, we LONG for eternity and the promise that suffering will end one day. We are more grateful, we are more empathetic, we are more honest, we are more loving, we are more joyful, we are more trusting, we are more gracious, and we cling to the hope of the gospel more than we ever did before J entered our home.

J's pictures still remain on our walls, some of the stuffed animals that sat in his room are scattered all over our house, and occasionally we find random feeding tube caps that somehow magically made the move from McKinney to Nacogdoches (where we are living since Dustin is now on staff with SFA football). Multiple times a week, Foster runs over to one of his pictures and say "Yace?" and we spend the next couple of minutes praying for her big brother and talking about all the things God did through his life.  Although he no longer lives with us, he is still very much a huge part of our family and always will be. We can't say our daughter's name without thinking of him and although we don't have the name officially picked out, it is important to us that our J man is somehow embedded in the name of Baby Vaughan #2 who will be making his debut January 2020!

Since Baby J left, Dustin and I have spent time writing down all of the ways God has used J in our family and the "theme" for both of us has been daily provision. God provided us with daily grace that kept us running back to Him each morning, daily strength that got our heads to our pillows each night, daily guidance as we navigated through some really difficult decisions, and daily shepherding care to remind us of His tenderness, love, discipline, and protection through some really dark valleys. He taught us that He can be trusted in all prayers He answers, whether the answer is "yes", "wait", or "no". He has answered A LOT of our prayers with "yes" over the past six years of marriage and He has definitely given us our fair share of "no's" but I can honestly say that His "no" to our prayer of adoption has been even sweeter than the "yes" our family had been praying for.