Are things “meant to be”?

Every year up until 2008, LWB doubled in size with its programs and donations. Last year, however, our donations declined just a bit. We reflected on the reasons behind this and one thought we had was that our largest support group has always been adoptive families from China. With adoptions slowing…maybe our donations were going to slow, too. We thought long and hard about our future plans, and we knew that one of the ways to help more children in need was to get our message out to people outside of the adoption community, while staying loyal to our core donors of adoptive families.

Then comes a night in December that I will never forgot….I was just finishing up my emails for the night and came across an email that another LWB volunteer had forwarded to me. It was about a contest in a magazine geared to moms….Cookie Magazine’s Smart Cookie award. It was past 9:30pm CT and the contest closed at 11:59EST. I thought about blowing it off, quite honestly, but it was 250 words or less on a mom who was making a difference and I thought I had nothing to lose. My first attempt writing about Amy was over 750 words…it is actually really hard to write about someone in just 250, especially Amy. I chopped up my entry as quickly as possible and pushed send. Never in a million years did I expect to hear anything. Amy had just told me the week before that we needed medical money, and this contest came with $35,000 in prize money for the charity. I knew that would help so many children, and was astounded when two days later, I got a call from Cookie magazine. Amy had been chosen as one of the five finalists, and of course LWB went on to win the donation from CITI. Baby Tai, above, will now have surgery because of this money.

We had all prayed and prayed for a way to help even more children, and I never would have thought that way would have come into my inbox through a magazine contest. I can’t help thinking that it was truly “meant to be”. So what do you think? Do you believe things happen for a reason?

Karen