Hoppy Boss-Dee

Today is my birthday. After breakfast, Dave got the guest house staff to sing to me. Winnie, Pressy, and Livingston stood in a row and sang "Hoppy Boss-Dee to you! Dee-ah Joey! Hoppy Boss-Dee to you!" My parents called me this morning - they would've sang too, but I was already gone to the Embassy. Every year my parents re-tell me the story of how they rushed to the hospital, and I was delivered just 20 minutes later. How my dad was glad I was a girl, and how the doctor was nervous that my long fingers and toes might be a sign of a disability.
Today we are hoping to get Joseph's official birth certificate - it's one of the missing documents we need to bring in to the Embassy so our file is complete and ready to be processed next week when we have the judge's written ruling in hand. The birth certificate. The date that is on both of my sons' birth certificates are likely not accurate. No one knows for sure. these birth certificate are just now being produced - they weren't given in a pretty envelope to the birth parents at the hospital as they exited with their bundles of joy. That's not a part of my sons' stories. Their stories have more unknowns than most kids they will grow up with.
But, that is a part of their beautiful stories: GOD knows the date they were born. He was there. He knit each of them in someone's womb, and He numbered the hairs on their heads... many months passed, and many hard things happened. And God was there.
Some day we will re-tell the boys' stories to them. Some parts of their stories we will tell often, some parts we will protect for only them to hear a long time from now. But their stories are rich, and beautiful, and show evidence of GOD being with them - from the day they were born.