READY

This is Stephanie...signing back on. Honestly, I don't know if I'll be able to keep up with writing but I enjoy it so much I figured I should get back on the bandwagon no matter what life brings my way or how busy I get. I'm a communicator and I have stuff to communicate dang it! ;)

I could go into a long update but I figure that that'll just bore you to tears so I'll start back up with the biggest thing happening at this moment in my life. As I write those words I can't stop the tears from welling up in my eyes.

My father died from cancer when I was 7 years old. I don't remember anything before I was 10. So as you can imagine this has been hard for me to deal with over the years. When my son Josiah turned 7 I had a revelation that I was not too young to have remembered anything...I just didn't remember ANYTHING! I pictured myself being 2 or 3 when my father died - not really being cognitively aware or relational on a mature level. But NO! I was 7 years old. When I look at Josiah - who is now 8 - and think about the conversations we must have had and the interaction we had my heart literally aches.

I can't remember a thing. Not his eyes, his smell, his laugh...nothing. Now, because I have a loving relationship with my heavenly father I've never been drastically affected by this. I don't have bouts with depression or horrific father's days but I do miss him and I miss the memories that don't exist. I have always wondered if I'm like my father...I've wondered what his favorite movie was...what his humor was like. So many questions...

Now to bring you to the point of my story. Before my mother and father met, my father was married to a woman named Nancy. From what I've been told they could not have children so they decided to adopt. They adopted two children...Andrew and Lissa. They raised these two children all the way to adulthood. These two people had my father all of their growing years. When Andrew and Lissa were about high school graduate age I was born. My father had apparently divorced Nancy (I have no clue when) and married my mother, who was significantly younger by the way.

Andrew and his family a long time ago

I don't know what happened between the kids and my father and mother but my parents left to live in Haiti to do medical missions work at a mission called the "Christian Mission of Pignon" that my father helped to start with his good friend Dr. Guy Theodore, a native to Haiti. My father died in Haiti.

I don't think I ever saw Andrew or Lissa again. After the death of my father, my mother went a bit crazy and was blown whichever way the wind carried her, or so I'm told. It wasn't until my grandmother broke her hip that we came to Texas to help her re-cooperate in 1989. We never left.

It wasn't until I was around 19 or 20 that I realized that Andrew and Lissa existed and were still out there somewhere. My family was out there some where. My mother pulled out a chest that I had never seen before and that day I beheld treasures more precious to me than any gold or money. I saw pictures of my father that I had never seen before. It blew me away - I looked just like him as a teenager and I had picked a man that resembled him as a teenager without ever having seen my father at this age.

I began doing searches on different search engines and the online yellow pages. I kept coming up empty handed because "Smith" is a very common last name of course! I was so discouraged. I even paid a search company to help me but they only provided me with a list of names and I called each and every one of them and never found them.

I had just recently been reviewed to be on a show called "Troy the Locator" to find them. I had been in the review process for being selected for their upcoming season. This show reunites family members. I had been waiting to hear back from them. Over the years I had randomly searched google, myspace and facebook but never with any success....until two days ago.

About two years ago I found out that Lissa married a man with the last name of "Frank" and I did a search for her on Facebook. There were a few but there was only one with the same hometown as my birthplace. I searched her page over for any assurance that she was the one I was looking for and then I thought to look in her friends for Andrew and there he was: Andy!

I could hardly believe it. I requested to be their friend and waited patiently. I received a message from Andy this morning stating that he was glad that to be in touch with me. He wrote:

"I understand from Lori that you have so many questions about our father and I imagine I can answer most of them. I will never forget the glow in his face when you were born."

"I imagine I can answer most of them"...do you know what those words mean to me? I feel like an emotional wreck. I suppose the realization of something that I've been waiting on for soo long is really surreal and I am filled with so many different emotions that it makes me feel like a typical woman! I've always prided myself in the fact that I'm pretty emotionally stable. Yes, for those of you who know me, I cry at the drop of a hat when watching a movie but in general I'm very stable and proud of it! ;0)

So all these feelings are catching me off guard. I've got so much to ask and I can't wait to meet them but I suppose there is always that possibility of rejection or finding out information that is less than perfect (which I'm ok with). The biggest emotion is excitement. I'm just so thankful to have found them and I am so thankful for the opportunity to get to know them and who they are...and hopefully more of the Smith family.

Pray for me as I put one foot in front of the other, walking through this door. It's not easy for me but I'm so ready.

If a picture says a thousand words then...enough said.