Barren and Blessed

Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for my soul. I cried to him with my mouth, and high praise was on my tongue. If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. But truly God has listened; he has attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me! - Psalm 66:16-20 2 days later, a text at 4:30am from our caseworker: "Zachary is here!" We had previously been to an ultrasound appointment where we got to hear his heartbeat. His birthmother was gracious enough to allow us to name him. And now it was time to actually meet him, face to face. We had a 2 hour drive ahead of us, which was both too little and too much time. Extra excitement. Extra nerves. I remember literally nothing from our drive to the hospital. It's a black hole that only God knows what I thought about or talked about with my husband. I imagine we prayed a whole bunch. We chec...

When you don't know what to do, do the thing in front of you. Sometimes life is so hard you can only do the next thing. Whatever that is, just do the next thing. God will meet you there. - Elisabeth Elliot After we got home from the trip of our second adoption match failure, we just carried on, by God's grace. We did the next thing. We prayed. We went to work. We submitted our profile for more potential adoption situations. We prayed. We cleaned and did laundry. We went on dates. We worshiped. We prayed some more. Life went on. We fixed our eyes on Christ and continued to serve God where we were. And strangely I felt mostly peace, right when I didn't think that was possible. It was a peace that surpassed all understanding. Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.   Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand;   do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your reques...

I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the  Lord  in the land of the living! Wait for the  Lord ; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the  Lord ! - Psalm 27:13-14 And then we waited. And waited. And waited. We got our clearances and fingerprints and physicals renewed every year. We changed different aspects of our profile a few times as we learned and understood more about the process, especially about the openness of adoption that is the current trend. We grew and changed a lot since first starting the adoption process. But we were still just waiting. And honestly it was very, very frustrating. It's difficult, and complicated, and expensive, and takes so much time. Why? Don't we always hear about the mass amounts of kids needing families? And about the opiate crisis flooding hospitals with addicted newborns that need a good home? We're a good home! Why is this taking so long?? I don't know, but it's frustrating. The average adoption wait ...

“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. - 1 Pet. 5:5-6 I  remember so many times thinking: "Seriously God? This is your plan?" or "What on earth did I do to deserve this kind of trial?" or just "Why? I don't understand. Why?". Well, let me first say that I'm a slow learner. And now it sounds almost childish to my ears. But then every once in a while I'll catch myself thinking those same thoughts again. And that humbles me. In many respects I'm still that child. My sanctification isn't over. When I was in high school I said, "I would never want to be a teacher". Well, guess what I got my college degrees in and spent the first 12+ years of my adult life doing? God gifted me to be a teacher, so that's what I am and I love it. Years ago I said, ...