Nisondiya {Joy}

I've always wanted to adopt, even when I was a little girl I dreamed of taking in an orphan and calling it my own. Yet that dream seemed to have left me for a few years. I can't recall thinking of adoption much during my teenage years, if at all. In 2008, sometime in October, I believe, I had to write a short story for my creative writing class, and I was completely lost in what to write about. I guess you could say I had writer's block :)). Yet, somehow - and to this day I am still amazed - the idea came to me to write about adoption from Ethiopia. That's right, the idea came to me - from Him. I know it had to be GOD.
I can now say that I feel called to adopt from Ethiopia, specifically a little girl. And I know this story is His way of bringing that desire of a little girl 12 or so years ago back to life.

What follows is the very beginning of the story I wrote from that idea. I will post the rest tomorrow. I hope you enjoy.

Her name is Aamina. It means “safe” in Arabic, they are told. They know nothing other than she is small for her age and very shy, and approximately thirty-two months going on three years on November 28th. In the three pictures they have received from the agency over a course of eleven months, they see that she has lots of tightly curled, light brown locks that shine gorgeously against her beautiful ebony skin and her eyes are bright diamonds of cocoa glittering like the stars.
She is a Jackson – Naomi Aamina Jackson. It is the one thing they knew from the beginning. They knew at the very first peek of the picture as it was slowly pulled from the manila envelope. The rugged, yet beloved envelope was marked Hope, Faith and Love Adoption Agency mailed from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. They chose to keep her given name as her middle and give her a new beginning with a first name more suited for this little girl she had become. The meaning of Naomi is “beautiful and gentle”, and in every way possible she was exactly that. Not only did her sparkling dark eyes and her contagious smile pull any onlooker in, this toddler brought beauty once again into their life; after the three miscarriages they couldn’t take it anymore. Their hearts were weak with the longing for another child, for that one they prayed for months to God to bless them with.
They loved their three daughters, but something just tugged at them for more children.