"Same Age Day" - A New Zaragoza Celebration!

This past Thursday was a very unique day for our family and, I believe, a unique day compared to other families! It is the only day of the year in which Carolina, Ruth and Ana are all the same age! For one day out of the year we have three daughters the same age…a truly unique experience! Hey, this could make a great riddle! How can three sisters that are not triplets have the same age, but only one day out of the year, yet have different birthdays? You can if you’re part of an adoptive family - especially the Zaragoza family!

You see, Ruth and Ana are exactly 9 months apart. Ruth was born on November 10, 2005. Ana followed exactly nine months later on August 10, 2006! We added another five year old to the family this past February when Carolina, whose birthday is August 12, 2005, became our daughter. So, when four year old Ana turned five this past Wednesday, Carolina and Ruth were already five years old. Then, Carolina turned six on Friday! So, that means that on Thursday, and only on Thursday (August 11th of each year), all three girls were five years old! (Actually, each year they will all be the same age from 6:20 p.m. on August 10, when Ana was born, until 9:10 a.m. on August 12, when Carolina has her birthday!)

Our three five-year olds (for a day): Ana, Carolina and Ruth on their "Same Age Day"!

This seemed to me to be a very special occasion so we had an impromptu “five” celebration where each girl got five chocolate chip cookies while I read them their bedtime story – a special longer-than-normal story. Lord willing, August 11^th will be a special day for my little girls throughout their entire lives when they can celebrate the unique and special relationship that they have as sisters – a God-given gift! We'll have to come up with six of something then seven of something then eight of something - you get the idea! (I can just see them flying from all parts of the world to be together, just the three of them, when they are adults on their "Same Age Day".)

This is just one of the many unique situations that our family experiences due to our unusual composition. It also served as part of a lesson that the Lord has been teaching me ever so gently. In a recent counseling session with one of our teenage daughters, the counselor made a comment that, at the time, I found rather hard to fully comprehend. She encouraged me to not try to make my current family into the image that I have of a “family” which comes from my experience of having only one sibling throughout my growing up years. While there are certain goals that I have for my family: love and respect one another, encourage one another, be more Christlike individually and as a family each day, there are many things that will look very different from one family to another...and very different in our family.

This same week that we had such a unique experience as our “same age” day, I ran across a note that I had scribbled in the margin of my Bible next to Psalm 129 when I had done the “Stepping Up” Bible study by Beth Moore. Psalm 129:1 reads: “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain." The note that I had scribbled next to it read: “God is a custom builder who can make my house according to His will, but it won't necessarily look like anybody else's house." I love it when things we read may not make sense at the moment, but days, weeks, months, even years later the Lord truly opens our eyes and we have an "Oh!" moment! Thus the need for daily devotions, so that God has something to draw from to give us those "Oh!" moments!

How perfect to remind me that it is truly the Lord who has built, and will continue to build, our home and it certainly looks like no other! That is just fine! Not everybody gets to celebrate a “same age day”!

P.S. You get a bonus video today! Angie accompanied the Sunday School kids as they sang a special music number on Father’s Day. That song has now become one of Ana’s favorites. Ana has a great voice (in our estimation, and we aren’t at all biased:-), although she usually doesn’t like to sing in front of people. I caught the girls on video the other day and the mistake they made towards the end made the video even more precious watching the two of them interact! Enjoy!