It wasn’t like I didn’t want to adopt those two children. I did. I really did. There were still a million things that could go wrong. Even if the medical reports had been complete and without issues, even if the social reports were perfect, even if there was another little girl there with them, Russia was still completely in control. Even if we had decided for sure on these two children, Russia had not yet decided on us.

I was using two adjacent fingers in a futile attempt to rub a nervous tick from my eye as I walked into the bedroom where Amy was happily tidying up. She threw her arms around me, squealed and gave me a kiss. “Don’t you think we might be getting a little too attached a little too soon?” I asked.

She pulled back, surprised. “What are you talking about?”

You know what I’m talking about. I didn’t reply.

“Oh, you mean the picture?”

Silence reigned.

“Don’t worry. I’m not getting too attached. They’re just so cute. I couldn’t resist. Besides, I have a good feeling about this. I’m sure everything is going to be fine!” She said while grabbing my arm and shaking it excitedly.

A good feeling? Like a mother is sure the doctor is mistaken when he notices the symptoms of Down syndrome in her newborn baby? Like when parents are sure God loves them and their sick child so much that the chemotherapy will work this time? Or like when you know you will grow old with your little brother? Sometimes the oil tanker explodes. I don’t believe in a Supreme Being who fixes everyone’s problems and caters to their individual whims.

Sometimes blind faith drives a mind like mine crazy. I believe in faith but numbers don’t lie. My problem with blind faith is that it notoriously excludes and ignores data. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle put it succinctly when he placed words into the mouth of his famous English investigator, Sherlock Holmes. “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

Amy’s sails were filled with the wind of her belief that heaven would take care of everything. My anchor was weighted down with facts, data, odds, and history. It isn’t just me. Anyone can understand the logic if they take a few minutes with a calculator.

Scientists estimate there are one septillion stars in the universe. That’s a trillion sets of a trillion. In fact, there aren’t a septillion grains of sand on Earth. Also, the law of averages indicates our solar system is average and upwards of a third of all other solar systems might be average. If average means they all have produced about 100 to 115 billion people, as it has been estimated to be the case with Earth, that’s a pretty large posterity for a Supreme Being. He’d need to be quite adept at time management if He were to spend his time micromanaging the lives of those offspring. (Just spending one minute per individual with persons on our own Earth would have kept him busy for over 200 thousand years without a break.)

Amy “had a feeling” things would work out well for us with Valentina and Daniil. She believed God would make it happen. Based on the enormity of the numbers of what I believed God’s creations entailed, and with the amount of time it would take for Him to be directly involved with solving their individual problems, I wasn’t nearly as confident.