Today is my sister, Cecilia Neo (Ray) Corbin’s, 24th birthday. There is no one in my life that I am more excited to celebrate than my sister.
To know Cecilia is to be blessed by the gift she is. Her middle name is “Neo”, which means gift in Tswana, a language from our home South Africa. Cecilia is the greatest gift of my life. She is pure joy in our home, “A party in a bottle” as we say. She brings with her loud laughter, joyous song, affectionate hugs and authentic conversation. I would say she is so much like me, but I hope I am also more like her. I’m not naturally affectionate or verbally open about my feelings, Cecilia has opened me up. I am stubborn, inpatient and pretty much always think I’m right-Cecilia has shown me that I am indeed NOT always right. She is both grace and strength, analytically thinking while trusting by faith in the God she loves. Cecilia is relatable, yet someone you aspire to be more like.
She is beauty inside and out, while having no ego. She is a servant at heart, desiring to bring people together, draw out the best in you, truly hear your heart and encourage the gold she sees in you that others might look past. She is a public speaker, a writer, a strong leader yet she desires no glory and shy’s from praise. Cecilia is so much more than you realize, you think you know her and there are so many more miraculous layers that you haven’t pulled back. She is South African, she is American, She is an Angeleno, she is a Missourian, she is a missionary kid, she is one of a kind in a way you could never fully understand or wrap your head around. To know Cecilia is see the gift she is. Her voice is full of power and wisdom, her hugs full of love and her laughter full of pure joy.
As an only child, I always wanted a sibling, a little sister. Growing up I was very lonely, and went through vast periods of time where I didn’t have any friends nearby and I would always think, If I just had a sister, I wouldn’t feel so alone. My parents tried to have another child, but at 38 years old, my mom was diagnosed with crippling endometriosis and had to have a hysterectomy. At 38 her dreams of having another child, and my dreams of having a little sister were crushed. We moved on, the sting of this loss lessoned over time as we buried it away, confused by God not fulfilling this desire of our hearts but believing there was more than our human eyes could see. Years past, over a decade in fact.
I was in college and it was my senior year and I still remember that phone call I received from my parents when I was on spring break with my a friend in Chicago. It was both my parents calling from South Africa, “Cherisse we met a baby girl named Neo, and we believe God has destined for us to adopt her, but we as a family must be in agreement…” They told me the story of how they each met her, brought her into their home and fell in love with her. They knew that this baby was meant to be in our family and as soon as I heard about her, I knew it too.
In my heart, in my spirit I knew, this was the little sister I had prayed for and longed for my entire life! She was coming a decade later then expected, after we thought all hope of having a baby was gone, but she was here, my sister, MY SISTER!
I knew without any doubt, before even meeting her in person, that she was my sister, my gift, my family, my joy.
The adoption process was beyond difficult. It was against the law for American’s to adopt South African’s at that time so my parents had to go to the highest court and petition for my sister, they had to fight for her. And as missionaries with no money, they had to believe God to provide lawyers and legal fees and you know what, God did. This miraculous story is one I will have to tell you in detail at a later time, because it will both shock you and make you believe in miracles!
All of the legal work took so much time that my mom stayed back in South Africa to complete it while my Dad came to America to begin a prescheduled fundraising tour. Cecilia was almost a year old when she and my mom arrived at the airport and I met her for the first time. When I laid eyes on her in person, I felt complete.The love of my life, was staring back at me, MY SISTER. When you’ve desired and prayed and longed for someone for so long and then she looks at you with the most gorgeous smile in the world, your heart leaps. Cecilia and I bonded that first year-the first year of her life and my last year of college. We shared a room for a portion of that year and I’ll never forget her yelling out, way too early in the morning, “Cherisseee, I wake!”
-The day I met Cecilia-
Some people thought we were crazy, my mom 48 and my dad 50 years old, adopting a baby! “They are just getting one child through college and now they are starting again?” But God has a funny way of giving you the desires of your heart in the most unconventional ways.
Often, it won’t make sense to anyone but you and sometimes people will think you are crazy, and thats when you ignore the noise and keep going-you do what God calls you to do. You see one thing I’ve learned in this world is that God’s ways are not my ways and His timing is literally NEVER my timing. But Wow! When you wait on God, even once you feel like you have lost everything you dreamed of, when you feel forsaken, when you feel alone, when a decade has gone by…and then ‘suddenly’, God gives you the desires of you heart in a way you could never have imagined and the gift is so much sweeter than you could have dreamed. Don’t give up on the desires your heart holds dear, don’t lose hope or faith in the waiting. The waiting is literally preparing you for your promise. Your loss, your loneliness, your frustrations, your waiting is not in vain. Your “Neo” is coming, don’t give up! The gift God gave us in Cecilia, is literally the greatest gift in my life and worth every minute of the wait.
Happy birthday to MY SISTER, Cecilia!
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