We share an anniversary this weekend and birthdays one day apart and were actually IN CHINA bringing home our superheroes the very same week. But we didn’t become friends (and THEN meet, because that’s how we roll) until months after we had brought home and fallen in love with the superheroes who completely rocked our worlds.

Erin was a friend of some friends, and from the moment our third-party friend sent me a link to her blog, I knew I needed more of her family in my life.

Erin had a beautiful way with words. She shared in real and raw ways about adoption, homeschooling, kid-raising and camping (I’m still stealing her firepit recipes), and the light of Jesus just emanated from the pages of her blog.

I followed her story as she documented the adventures of HER 2-year-old Chinese orphan-no-more, Bekah, who loved watermelon, named her doll “Adverb” and learned English faster than any of my American-born children ever did.

I read about Bekah’s integration with the four other superheroes the Leininger family already had in their home, and how she, who had barely been introduced to a car seat, jumped right into the hiking/camping/adventure-seeking mix with reckless abandon, even despite congenital heart conditions that should have theoretically slowed her down. 

I fell in love with this little superhero who this family told repeatedly was their girl “forever and ever and ever.” 

And I sobbed as I followed Erin’s journey through Bekah’s complicated heart surgery that, three weeks later, ended in a farewell here on Earth and a homecoming up in Heaven.