Jubilee's birthday is a medical estimate, though we will always celebrate it as if we had been right there holding her moments after her birth.
The truth is, we weren't. Someone else was, and that someone else brought her to the crossing of Commercial Street in Yangchun City, China, two years ago...today.
July 26 is the first day of Jubilee's recorded history. On this day in 2009, someone found our baby girl in a box, or a basket, or something like it, at a busy city intersection, and brought her to the nearest orphanage. On this day in 2009, a mother, her heart beating wildly and tears flooding her face so much that she could scarcely see, laid her 6-day-old child on the ground and walked away. That one heroic act, done two years ago today, would change that mother's life forever, and the life of Jubilee, and the lives of Daniel, myself, and our three other children. Her selfless decision meant medical hope for a little girl with a need too big for her relatives to meet, and ultimately it meant a loving mother and a doting father and devoted brothers for Jubilee. Forever.
I tried desperately this morning to hunt down what my friends and family were doing on July 26, 2009, while Jubilee lay crying on a street corner. The crazy thing is NONE of you (that I could find) posted a blog post on that day, myself included. During that month I know that we were moving apartments and receiving visiting grandparents from America and getting used to newborn Brave and life with three kids, but I have no record of what I was doing on the 26th.
I guess it was her day, and hers alone.
I often think about how another woman was pregnant with my daughter at the same time I was pregnant with my third son. Brave and Jubilee, in different tummies, to be raised side by side for the rest of their lives. This woman and I were probably throwing up on the same mornings, and up sleepless on the same nights. When I was giving birth to Brave, Jubilee was kicking less and less in her increasingly cramped space, getting ready for her entrance into the world.
I will never stop praying for Jubilee's birth family. Never. Though their identity in this life can not possibly be ascertained, G0D knows exactly who they are, and where they are, and my prayer is that I will get to introduce them to their sweet Jubilee in Heaven.
