God of Miracles

Our dossier is finally in the hands of our adoption agency!

This huge stack of papers has been prayed over and cried over. It brought me to the end of myself time and time again. I can truly say that I am a broken woman but in the best possible way. This huge stack of papers tells a story of God's great faithfulness and is just a small glimpse into this enormous journey that has completely changed me from the inside out. I hope to share more of this story as time goes by but right now I'm savoring the changes being made in my heart and I can tell you that there is even more breaking and stripping that need to happen before our sweet daughter comes home. Lord, give me strength!! Here are two truths God has been impressing on my heart recently brought on through a book written by Beth Moore:

God is who He says He is.

God can do what He says He can do.

This adoption journey has been a journey into the heart of God for me. It has revealed areas of my heart that I didn't even realize were there, areas where I have refused to believe certain truths about God. It has shaken me to the core revealing to me that yes, our God is exactly who He says that He is and He will accomplish all things He sets out to accomplish. My eyes have been opened to how completely insignificant I am but I am amazed that the Lord has chosen to take me along for the ride. His glory and might are on display even now in the life of our sweet daughter and His desire is for all of those watching her story to see who He truly is and that He is worthy of all of us...all of our praise and all of our worship.

God is moving mightily and He desires to do this in the lives of all his creation. When I began this journey I was scared to pray for miracles. What if my prayers weren't answered the way I had hoped?!? What if I just didn't have enough faith?!? Even if no outward miracles had taken place I can say now that God has been working miracles in my heart. More on that at another time because He isn't even close to finished there! Our God still works miracles and if anyone needs a picture of that truth just take a look at how God has worked in our adoption. Look to the right of my blog page...do you see that percentage on our GoFundMe page? In less than a year God has provided more than $30,000 for our adoption! We don't even have a picture of our daughter yet but people have felt led to give.

Complete strangers have donated money.

Acquaintances we haven't seen in years have given.

Friends and family who are struggling financially gave out of their own need.

Let me say that God has blessed your generosity and we are in awe! Thank you. Your prayers and support have been constant reminders of God's goodness.The creator of the Universe is orchestrating every little detail to bring our daughter into our family and it is just amazing. For those who are continuing to pray for this process here are some requests that we are currently lifting up.

Prayer Requests:
- We are praying big prayers asking God to bring us the referral of our daughter quickly.
- The referral process can be gut-wrenching and painful as families often have to turn down a referral due to the need of the child being beyond their ability and resources. We are praying explicitly for this process to be filled with peace and confidence in the Lord's work. Although we are not certain of God's plan I do not want to have to turn down multiple referrals so I am praying specifically toward that end.
- Pray against spiritual attacks. Last week was incredibly heavy and hard for me. I can say now that the only reason I am doing better is that I had sweet friends lifting me up in prayer. Pray that my husband and I may remain focused on God and that He would surround our family in this journey.

Good News Amidst the Wait

Happy New Year! It's just crazy that 2013 has come to a close. That was a life changing year for us as we officially began our adoption journey. Now that 2014 has been ushered in I find this year full of hope. We are finally out of the muck and mire of the majority of the paper chase and are awaiting word on the identity of our little girl. Tomorrow will mark the 4th month in our wait for a referral and there is no telling when we will get that long awaited phone call. I'm slowly learning to take it one day at a time surrendering my emotions, desires and plans to the Lord. He has already brought about a lot of growth in my own life and I can only imagine what this coming year will hold.

Well onto the good news. Last month we received word from USCIS that they needed additional documents before granting approval for our family to adopt from a Hague country. After sending in paperwork to additional states, experiencing lost paperwork and requesting an extension we finally received word today that we have been granted USCIS approval! This is the final piece of our dossier! There is still more to do with the dossier but this approval is HUGE! Our 2014 has started off on a high note so let's pray this keeps up. May 2014 be the year we get to see a picture of our daughter!

 

“Waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one's thoughts.”
― Elisabeth Elliot

Yard Sale

We have now raised a little over 40% of the funds needed to bring our daughter home! Wow. I remember when we were praying and just trying to raise money for the first program installment.God has provided abundantly for this little girl to have a home. Although we still have a ways to go God continues to remind us that he has this...nothing is out of his control.

On that note...Jonathan and I continue to wait for a referral. Currently we are nearing the 2 month mark. I don't really have any expectations of a phone call any time soon which has eased my mind quite a bit however the wait is still hard. Thankfully though, the wait has been eclipsed by the fact that our schedule has been jam packed for a couple of weeks now. The first Saturday in October we held a ginormous yard sale. If I were to be completely honest I don't think I will ever organize a yard sale ever again...no seriously...I'm not kidding. The amount of work, time, energy and not to mention living room space that must be utilized for such an undertaking is just utterly exhausting.

This picture is just the tip of the iceberg. I am in no way the cleanest person alive but this amount of clutter almost pushed me over the edge. Shew. We woke up at 5am the day of the sale to organize all of the chaos. I wish I would have remembered that even the sun isn't crazy enough to be up at 5am. So we had to set up tables by the blinding light of Jon's headlights. We had so much stuff to organize that I don't think we even finished setting things up until an hour or more into the actual yard sale. The entire day was a steady flow of people and by the end of the sale it looked like we had hardly made a dent but...

all that work...

all the stress...

 

paid off.

We raised $942. In ONE day...at a yard sale! Woohoo. It's always so humbling to witness more of God's great provision. We have a few more fundraising ideas on the back burner but with the holidays coming we will probably save those for the New Year. As far as posts go I will continue to write as I feel led but until we get the long awaited phone call for a referral we probably won't have a lot of exciting stuff to share. Please continue to keep us in your prayers that we would wait well.

Getting Closer

There are times I feel like I am one step away from crazy! The waiting, the phone calls, the red tape, the paperwork...AHHH!! I am struggling to keep my emotions in check.

It seems as if we have been in a holding pattern for quite a while with me saying the same thing over and over again, "waiting for the homestudy to be written." Well now it has been written and Jon and I have finally laid eyes on the 14 page document. We have read and re-read it proofing as we went. The final edits have been sent to our social worker but we are now waiting on a call from our family coordinator to specify some wording in the homestudy. If all goes well our social worker will hopefully be able to email our homestudy to our family coordinator today. Once AWAA's main office receives the homestudy they will take a couple of days to review it and approve it. There is a chance they will ask our social worker to change or add a few things which shouldn't lengthen the process too much. I'm praying that by next week we will have a finalized and approved homestudy. I know that we have made a lot of progress over the past couple of months but right now at this moment progress seems painfully slow. I am SO incredibly ready for the homestudy portion of this journey to be over and done with. Deep breath...

For those following our journey please continue to pray:
- Pray for patience, especially for me. There are moments I feel completely overwhelmed and it has been easy to allow these emotions to affect me throughout the day. I desire for the Lord to grow me through this process but I need to be willing to surrender to His perfect timing.

- Pray for this section of our journey to end soon. Pray with me that by next week we will have a completed and finalized homestudy.

The Trouble With Monotony

I haven't written in a while. This lack of posting is not because adoption has been far from my mind, quite the opposite actually. I find that adoption and our daughter are almost always on my mind and in my prayers. It has been a while since I posted anything because there just isn't much to report. We still have yet to begin the paperwork process but we are getting closer. Debt is seriously dwindling and we are preparing for the beginning steps of what is affectionately called the paper pregnancy by funneling away extra money for the start up costs that can honestly be quite steep. Yeah, not exactly the exciting news I want but we are headed in the right direction.

Allow me to be honest with you as I share the hardest part of this journey right now. The current  problem with the monotony of life and what feels like little progress is that I am incredibly tempted to doubt God's calling concerning adoption. About a year ago God made this calling quite clear through scripture, prayer and even through random conversations. We saw God speak very loudly but it's funny how time seems to dull my sense of trust. When God was making His voice clear in our lives it was exciting but as time has passed I find myself tempted to ask God to prove His calling again. "Just show me one more time that what we are doing is your will, one more little sign."

Not only have I been temped to ask God to clarify His call, I have also been quite tempted to question whether His plan is actually the "best" for our family. I have had to surrender my picture for what I want our family to look like. I have always wanted a big family and it's quite obvious that I'm not getting any younger. What if this adoption throws off our plans? What if our family doesn't turn out the way I hope? What if...

Now my heart's cry, the desperate longing of my soul is for the Lord to grant me more faith. How can I possibly make it through the entire grueling adoption process if I can't trust the Lord before we even begin?!? This is me. This is the state of my heart. This is what I'm wrestling with now. 

I feel like I am always saying this but...

God, I believe. 

Help my unbelief.

Lessons Learned While We Wait

Sometimes the wait feels excruciating and we haven't even begun this process yet. Every adoption story is different and I would assume that most stories begin years before an application is ever sent. Just like the desire for a biological child begins to stir in the heart of a parent so does the desire to bring your child home who may live halfway across the world. There is a longing, an ache. You know in your heart that your family would not be complete if you don't pursue this calling. For our family, this wait has already seemed long.

Jon and I graduated from college and less than a year later were engaged. As we began to talk about our future we both knew God would call us to adopt. We just had no idea what that would look like.

"Wait for the Lord..."

We got married in 2006 and a few years into our marriage we began to feel a stirring to add to our family so we started to look into adoption. As we talked through the calling God had placed on our lives it was clear he was calling us to bring home a daughter from India. So as I began to research adopting from that specific country I was dismayed to see every program specify age for the adoptive parents. We weren't even close to being old enough. So...we waited.

"...be strong..."

The Lord blessed us with a son in 2010. Our lives were quickly turned upside down like all families who welcome a child for the first time. We welcomed a new normal for our family and ran with it. Less than a year after our son's birth we packed up and moved to a new city as Jon pursued God's calling to full time ministry. In the midst of getting settled in a new place something else began to stir in us.

During the fall of 2011 God began to quicken our hearts to pursue adoption. We began fasting and praying. God very clearly said yes but Jon felt a strong leading to prepare our finances first. We had a large amount of credit card debt resulting from the financial strain we felt after having our son. Our job situation was rough at that time and we hardly had enough to make ends meet. Jon felt compelled that we should honor God by hammering away at that debt before even thinking about raising money for an adoption. So following Jon's leading, God opened up a part-time job for me. Currently my paychecks are steadily paying off our debt. In a matter 4 months we have paid off almost half of our credit card debt! Praise the Lord!!

"...and take heart and wait for the Lord." - Psalm 27:14

Currently, that is where we stand. We are waiting again although it is a wait with a purpose. God is moving and we are being obedient to his leading. However, as I think of this wait I can't help but realize that our lives as Christians are in this same waiting pattern. Christ has come to ransom a world for himself. He has completed his work as Savior by living a perfect life, dying on the cross and rising from the dead allowing those who put their faith in him to have forgiveness of their sins and eternal life. Amen, the work as been done. However we still wait.

"Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him." - Hebrews 9:27-28

We live in a broken world. We still struggle with sin in our own lives as we strive to live a life of holiness. Our hearts ache for more. We see that our desires cannot be fulfilled in this world. Our aching, our groaning is for the return of our God. Our ache is to see the face of our Savior and to worship him for eternity, to experience that unbroken fellowship with God that we were made to enjoy. We ache for our own adoption. Yes Lord, come!! So just like our adoption journey involves a purposeful waiting period so does our walk with the Lord. We are waiting for the completion of God's work but we have been given work to do while we wait.Our debt has been paid but so many others live without Christ. Our lives have been ransomed but we still often live like they belong to us. There is much work to be done as we wait, so we wait in expectation knowing that what is to come is better than what we could have ever imagined.

"...we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redeemed of our bodies." - Romans 8:23b