My name is Melisa Stranigan. I have been a Christ-follower for over four decades. My amazing husband and I have been married for 32 years. I am a mother of two beautiful children. The eldest is our biological daughter. She is 24 years old and is a successful esthetician.  The youngest is our 19 year old adopted son who is serving in the US Marine Corps. We have been residing in the quaint town of Monument since early 2000. I’m a certified Biblical Counselor through the International Association of Biblical Counseling. It’s a joy coming alongside women and offering them help, healing and hope by pointing them to the Wonderful Counselor for true and lasting  transformation.  My husband and I married young and always wanted to have children. After 8 long years and many months of trying fertility drugs we finally conceived. What a miracle it was to finally give birth to a beautiful daughter. When she was four years old we wanted to have more children, but my body simply didn’t cooperate. I’ve always had a heart for adoption, so we prayerfully decided to adopt. We began the process by attending workshops, talking with other families, and completing our home study. We chose to adopt a girl from China. Now that we submitted all the paperwork, it was ‘hurry up and wait’. Our patience was being tested as days turned to weeks and weeks to months with no news. This was different from being pregnant. Pregnancy has an end in sight. We had no idea when we would be bringing our daughter home. The unknowns would sometimes darken our vision, but we remained hopeful and continued to walk by faith. The phone would ring and we would rush to pick up to discover that we haven’t been matched, but then told to ‘hang in there’. Other times we would get phone calls from our social worker that a potential case matched our profile for the most part, but there was always an obstacle that came between the birth mother and us. I felt like my heart was in a tug of war. The Lord would whisper into my soul to ‘be still and know that He is God!’ One Friday morning I opened my emails and came across one from our social worker greeting us with good news! I was thinking to myself…finally! Our little China doll has been matched with her family. As I continued reading, she mentioned that a handsome African American baby boy was born on Wednesday. The birth mom read our profile and thought we were the perfect match! The mixed thoughts and emotions rushed through me and spilled out through laughter and tears. Maybe this is why God had held us back from China, because our child wasn’t several countries away; he was only a few states away. I knew in my heart when I saw his precious cherubim-like face, that he was our son. Our plans don’t always align with God’s plans, so we sought the Lord and He assured us that this was our child. Our story of adoption has been filled with both joy and challenges across the years. However, we know our gracious and merciful God has used and is still using all of it to draw us closer to Him and to bring Him glory.