God's Gifts

As I was thinking of Eden this morning during my quite time, I had this revelation.
Many times Christians are required to make sacrifices, but sometimes we must also be open to receiving His gifts. After all, He did bestow upon us the most important gift of all, His Son. Christ paid the price, He was the ultimate sacrifice, but we must accept His gift of grace in order to receive eternal life through Christ Jesus our Savior. How many gifts do we miss out on because we believe we must "do" something or sacrifice something in order to receive it? If He has given us the greatest gift of all, then don't you think that He blesses us with other gifts along the way? Not because we have done something to deserve it; quite the contrary, it is just because He can, because He loves us, and promises to give us the desires of our heart. It is all for His glory, and it is done when we have no control over it. Children are a gift from the Lord, whether He chooses to bless us naturally or through the process of adoption; each child is from Him. A gift. This has brought me much encouragement today. Hopefully it will encourage those who read this as well.

Strength for a Weary Heart

I cannot tell you how my heart has been in anguish over this adoption lately. I long for the Lord to reveal Eden to us; or to even give us direction on how to proceed with this process. Just when I needed Him to, He showed up! Read these words that sunk deep into my weary heart, "And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not loose heart." (Galatians 6:9). That was just the encouragement that my heart needed today. I will not loose heart!

A Child's Prayer

Mary Grace's prayer tonight, "Thank you Lord for providing Eden, and let her come soon." We should all take lessons from our children. My 10 year old prayed not asking, but thanking and believing that the God of the universe will meet the desire of her heart!

Wait Upon the Lord

Psalm 26:14 says, "Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the Lord!" Waiting seems to be where we are stuck right now. We are waiting for Lord to point us in the right direction and for Him to provide what is needed in order to make our calling to adopt possible. For now, we will wait on the Lord, and He alone shall strengthen our hearts.

The Why Questions Answered

Why are you adopting? You already have four children! Why China, why not domestically? These are the two most frequently asked questions that we receive; so I thought that I would take a moment to answer them. We are adopting because we have been called by the Lord to do so. James 1:27 says, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." While the world may not understand why we are doing this; I assure you, our King does. We are being obedient to God's Word and to His calling for our lives.

God planted the seed of adoption into mine and Ross' hearts at a very young age, and has continued to water that seed into adulthood, our marriage, and even until now. Not only was there a seed planted, but it was a seed to adopt from China. God does not say to take care of the orphans within the country you live; He says, "Care for orphans." I believe that God designed it so that different people are called to adopt from different places all over the world so that we would be able to care for HIS orphaned children; no matter what country they are from. The country that He happened to lay on our hearts was China.

 I hope that even if you do not agree with our decision to adopt, that you will continue to follow our story through to the end. It is our prayer and hope that all may say that they have seen the glory of the Lord throughout our adoption journey. If you do support our decision, then we would like to thank you for your prayer, kind words, and encouragement throughout this journey. To sum it up: yes, it's about being a forever family to a sweet baby girl who would otherwise be orphaned; and yes, it is about being obedient to God's Word. More importantly, it is about giving God the glory for what He has done and is doing in our lives. That is why we are adopting a baby girl from China.

Immunizations

Ross and I keep hearing, "Be prepared," from the Lord. We have done several things in an effort to do this, but today was one of the biggest steps that we have taken. We have known that we would need shots in order to travel to China, but have yet to get them. Well, we can no longer say that. Ross and I both received Hep A, Hep B, and Tetanus injections today. Even in this step, our God worked out all of the details. When we first arrived at the doctor's office, they said that I could receive the immunizations today, but that Ross would have to schedule an appoinment because it had been over a year since the doctor had seen him. So we played along. We waited for the nurse to call me back and then I asked her if she could ask Dr. B if Ross could go ahead and get his shots too. You see, Dr. B has known about our adoption endeavors since the beginning, so he already knew that we would be in for these shots one day soon. Of coarse he said yes; so we were both able to get our travel immunizations today. Now we have to go back in 4 weeks for another round, but woohoo for getting one step closer to being prepared!

UPDATE: Round two of our immunizations were done on July 25th. One more round in December and we should be good to go in that area anyway.