Loaves and Fishes

Brian and I have a new hobby of looking for "loaves and fishes", as in when Jesus took the loaves and fishes and fed the 5,000.  Whenever we discover money or stuff we didn't expect we look at each other and say "loaves and fishes, baby!"  Maybe it's because we're looking for it, but there seems to be a lot of loaves and fishes these days.  Sometimes it's little things, like the extra two tacos they put in our sack from Taco Bell a couple weeks ago (Thomas was really glad it was tacos and not actually fishes or loaves!).  Sometimes it's big things, like my paycheck seemed a little bigger recently.  We discovered that starting with the very next pay after we signed the adoption application I was getting $68 more each check because I had just finished paying for my 5 years of service credit that was being deducted each pay.  Loaves and fishes, baby! 

Along those same lines, an amazing thing happened to me a couple weeks ago.  One morning I got a nice email from a friend who had learned about the adoption and wanted to wish us well.  She has an adopted son and I was struck with the fact that we have many, many friends with adopted children but they were all adopted as infants.  It occurred to me that we really don't know anyone personally who has adopted older children or siblings and that we would have to seek out those resources at some point.  So I went on with my day, which included leaving school in the middle of day to go see Meredith's class put on a little Christmas program.  It was totally inconvenient and I really didn't want to go (I'm not exactly SuperMom, here, I know) but I went and it was, of course, adorable.  Afterward, another mom came up to me and said, "I know you're Meredith's mom, I wanted to introduce myself.  I heard you were adopting and I wondered if you knew that we adopted four sisters from Colombia when they were 12, 10, 8, and 6."   We had a great conversation (the first of many, I hope) and as I was driving back to school, I was overwhelmed by the "coincidence" of this connection.   I wish I could say that I had actually prayed for a person like this in my life, but I really just thought about it and then she appeared a matter of hours later.  I'm still awed by the providence we've been shown again and again, in things both big and small.

It makes me wonder what other Loaves and Fishes might be coming our way next!  Thomas is still hoping for more tacos...