living life wildly!: God's promise

5 years ago, in the midst of our infertility journey, i went to church. after about 10 minutes i decided to leave as i didn't feel that the message was for me. i decided as soon as everyone stands up, i'll just disappear, without anyone noticing. as the people stood up, the pastor turned towards the side of the church where i was standing and said: 'you, you who are angry with God, sit'. so i sat.

Philippians 1 vers 6 says: 'being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ'

this was the promise i held onto these past years. God promised that He will finish the beauty in our lives that He started....

on 7th july 2008 we got a call the monday afternoon at 17h00, asking us if we want to adopt kellen. the same friend who phoned me, phoned me on the 3rd of february 2007, saying the following: 'lynne, i'm standing with your son in my arms. your son was born today. i had a dream and your and marcel's name is engraved on his forehead'. (you can read kellen's adoption story here)

on the 22nd of august 2008 we went to pick our little boy up... he was 18 months old.

returning to the present.

kellen is 4 and a half years old. he has been our son... forever.

on the evening of the 19th of august @ 19h00 we got an email to contact our social worker (most amazing 2 women in the world!) in cape town, south africa. (we were living in malaysia at this stage). her first words to us were: 'we need to know what your situation is as we have a little baby girl who needs to be placed next week. i'm flying on monday to pick her up'.

we asked if we could phone her back in a few minutes...

we stared into each other's eyes... tears running down my cheeks.... (thinking in the back of my mind...this cannot be happening! it's amazing! there is a little girl up for adoption! what are we going to do). marcel and i gave each other one look and he phoned his company to change our air tickets to get back to south africa as soon as possible. we phoned our social worker and said we are on our way. she giggled and gave us some information... i asked her name... she said her name is 'Bella'. it's all i needed to know... Bella... it means 'Beautiful'

marcel and i looked at each other, i said her name is Bella and we said: 'our baby girl's name is 'bella'.

with kellen we decided to keep his birthname, (which means 'mighty warrior') - not for one second did we think of changing his name. we only added marcel's dad's name, daniel, and our surname, malan = kellen daniel malan

we decided to give bella my mom's name, elizabeth. on the sunday after the call i researched the spiritual meaning of elizabeth...

Elizabeth \e-lizabe-th, el(i)-za-beth\ as a girl's name is pronounced ee-LIZ-a-beth. It is of Hebreworigin, and the meaning of Elizabeth is "God's promise; God is my oath".

breathing out...

God's promise. full circle. a boy and a girl. love.

on the 25th of august 2011 we picked our little girl up at the airport....3 years and 3 days after we got our amazing son!