From the Beginning

If I'm going to dedicate this site to Logan, I feel you must know how he came into my life.

It is going to sound unbelievable - but - believe me it is true!

And all the glory goes to my

personal Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!!

I wanted to be a mom from as far back as I can remember. I wanted to have a child of my own. Well, as circumstance would have it - at 21 years of age I found myself facing the battle of my life - CANCER. I had to have a complete hysterectomy which was just the beginning of months of surgery and radiation. I was heartbroken. I won't go into the details of the years between 21 and 29 but I will tell you that it was some of the hardest years of my life.

Adoption had always been in "my" plans. I had always wanted to "have" a child and adopt a child. I met my (ex) husband in 1999 and we married in 2000. He was blessed with two beautiful blond haired blue eyed boys from his previous marriage. I was saddened that I would not be able to share a child with him. We agreed that attending Foster/Adopt classes was for us. We were going to adopt a baby!! I was so excited! We chose to do adoption through the state because it was very inexpensive and we were a very paycheck to paycheck couple.

Fast-forward just a bit - we attended our classes and enjoyed them. We were looking forward to finishing our classes and adopting our baby! Well..........the Lord likes to show me, from time to time, Who is in control and He reminded me that it is NOT me!

A couple of weeks BEFORE we finished our classes I received a thrilling phone call.

A friend of mine, Susie Jones, called me on Monday, October 15, 2001 and told me that she had sold a home to a couple that had a 14 year old niece that was pregnant and thinking about giving her baby up for adoption. She wanted to know if I would be interested in meeting her. I didn't have to give it a second thought - YES I wanted to meet her! Yikes.....I couldn't make the decision by myself. I had a husband to discuss this with. I didn't care if my baby was black, blue, purple, polka-dotted or yellow - a baby is a baby BUT Reid was alittle more concerned. We discussed meeting Ashley and agreed that it couldn't hurt - we had at least a month to meet her and make a decision because the baby wasn't due for another month to six weeks. Susie called me on Wednesday, October 17th, to see what we had decided and I was able to tell her that YES we would love to meet Ashley! I could NOT wait. As it turns out, I didn't have to wait long. After returning home, from church, that evening - we were inundated with messages. ASHLEY WAS IN LABOR!!! Susie had left numerous messages telling us we needed to get to the hospital quick. I was stunned. I couldn't imagine running up to the hospital, meeting this little girl, and telling her we wanted to adopt her baby. (Oh, did I mention that this little girl had just lost her mom 7 days prior and had been moved from New Orleans to Longview?) This little girl had been through enough. We made phone calls, prayed, made phone calls, and prayed some more. The state told us that if we didn't go to the hospital and she did decide to give her baby up for adoption we would not get the baby because we had not completed our classes yet. That settled it - off to the hospital we went. We met her aunt and uncle and immediately felt a bond with them. They asked if we wanted to meet Ashley. I wasn't sure that I was prepared but didn't want to miss out on this opportunity. Her aunt took us to the Labor and Delivery room to meet Ashley. We spoke with her for approximately 15 minutes (definitely no more than that) and she looked at us and said, "I want you to raise my baby". What? Adoption doesn't happen that way. We weren't prepared - we didn't have a diaper, a baby bed, or any of the other stuff a baby needs. Of course, we said YES, we would love to adopt her baby!

On Thursday, October 18, 2001, at 3:41 a.m.,

my Greatest Gift From God was born!

He was Beautiful!

From the very second I laid eyes on him -

I was in love with my son!

I didn't know that I was capable of loving a human being

as much as I loved him at that moment.

It was instant.

Indescribable.

MY SON!

Logan Ross