Adoption

The concept of adoption should not be foreign to any Christian. The idea of a child who is wounded, abandoned, cast aside, in need of a Redeemer. Someone able to rescue and save them accepts them and builds a relationship with them, leagally makes them their child. What a marvelous thing. (Sound familiar to anyone else?)
Here I sit. All my part complete for the placement of 2 sweet kids into our home. We have crossed the ts and dotted "I"s and now we sit and wait for the decision to be made. Patiently impatient. We have a desire to bring these kids into our home and into our family. We desire to show them love and unconditional support and faithful stability. We long to let them know that family is forever and love is greater than anything and that God is the only true source of that love and that He will never fail them.
I don't know what will happen with this. I don't know how it will play out. I know it won't be a piece of cake or as simple as ABC... but honestly I feel like that should not matter. These kids need a home and we were sought out to provide that home for them if we were willing and able. We decided to be willing and the courts will determine if we are able and God will direct his will in all of this. I am truly excited to see what the Lord does with these kids. I would love to be their home and family but I am also confident in whatever the Lord decides will be the best for all involved and that in the process he will make his way known and that he has the kids' best interest (as well as my own family's) in mind. He wants our good.
So I will praise him no matter the outcome and I will be thankful for His way and his plan and His direction. I will praise His sovereignty above all else. I will thank him for Love. TRUE, Unaltered Love.

The thick of it

Sometimes life seems to hand you a bit more than you can chew. In the midst of those periods it seems that all you can do is keep surviving and pushing forward. Eventually the light will shine at the end of the tunnel. I don't think it is anything unique to me or my life. Every person has those periods of time where you just have to keep pushing through. Once you are through a few of those times and you know an end eventually comes it slowly gets easier to push through (not necessarily quicker to get through but at least easier to trust that God will get you through).
Sometimes when you are doing great and right where you feel you need to be and doing right what you think you should be doing all the sudden something happens. It sometimes isn't a bad thing either. IT could be something really good. But it throws your "normal" off and causes you to have to make adjustments.
In my journey that I happen to be walking through we have been presented with an opportunity to grow our family. There is a lot that goes into it. It would be through the placement of children of a relative. My husband and I spoke breifly when the call happened and we both just knew we couldn't shut the door on the idea ourselves. If God wanted the door shut he would have to do it.
I think about Noah with his family. He had his immideate family in the ark and he knew what God had told him. He knew God planned to save them. But he could not shut the door to the ark himself. Noah was a good man and a Godly man. Can you imagine shutting the door and knowing that the people on the other side were going to perish.
While there obviously is not such a finality to the decision of whether we try to take in our niece and nephew or if we allow the system to decide a separate home for them to go to it still means shutting the door on two children we love dearly. God shut the ark for Noah and made the path clear for him and for those outside of the ark. There was no guessing at what he wanted to do.
In the same way we just are praying for God to open the door or close the door himself. We are open to whatever he decides to do. The hoops we need to get through are numerous. And the only way we will be approved as an adoptive home for these sweet kids is if he works out the details. So if we get approved we can have the assurance that it was His will and not ours. We were not seeking this situation out. The caseworker found my husband through the internet and we were fortunate enough to get the message. We had discussed adopting or fostering later in life but that was something for another chapter of our lives. Now we know that God may have a different plan and that is okay. If this does not work out we will also know that he is the one who allowed it to not happen. And we will rejoice in His plan and trust Him to work out the details for the kids. They will have the home that God has for them.
The same way that God can shut a door He can also swing a door wide open! So we are praying for His will and for peace in whatever that will is.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
I find myself in a mix of thoughts and emotions. I feel a little overwhelmed at times. I think about what would need to happen to make 2 more kids work in our family situation: the bedrooms, the transportation, to things as simple as our seating arrangements for meals! The fact that our living room only currently seats 4 or 5 comfortably...That is until my Pastor's wife found me some stools on the side of the road as she was driving home the night I mentioned my seating shortage to her! God works out the details. And as I sit and wait on what he plans to do and what we need to do next I a so thankful that my God is a God who hears me, as well as the God who sees me (and Not only me, but also those precious kids who are waiting for a stable place to call "home").

The Expected Journey

The expected amble (as opposed to the Expectant Amble) is the journey I had planned on taking.
I had plans growing up. (Not many...But I did have plans). Today in Sunday school my husband asked the class if they had ever had plans that fell through or that didn't turn out the way we thought they should have. I had to laugh a little at the memories of the plans I had. They were not bad plans and planning is not bad in and of itself. The idea though is that we need to realize that the plans we make are not set in stone and God will direct the course of our journey.
Sometimes even when people are seeking the Lord with all their being through the plans and actions they take they can still end up looking like "failures" to the world when the Lord shifts the plan and moves them to a different direction. It can look as if they "gave up" on a dream, or "quit" when the going got tough. When in reality they were the brave and courageous one who was being sensitive to God's leading for that season and to the change in direction that God was taking them for the next.
Missionaries who leave the field after a term is complete, college students who change career paths and transfer to different schools half way through their studies, ladies who give up careers to become stay-at-home moms who homeschool their children after spending years gaining their degree and dream job. Honestly, the world (and possibly other Christians) may say "foolishness" or "weakness" or "shame". We do not know what God is calling them to do. We are not the ones on the receiving end until it happens in our own lives.
When we live by the expected amble where we are walking the way we expect our journey to go or the way we think others would expect us to go we are not sensitive to God's guidance. We have our plan and our goal and we are walking with our head down looking at our well marked map making sure we make it there in one piece. We are focused so much on our direction and end that we miss the surprises and blessings that God has for us. We miss opportunities that God places in our way. Frankly, we even miss God trying to pull us over another way. We miss him calling us to a new path.
I was like this. I had plans and I thought I was doing everything in my power to make those plans happen. I started with thinking I would become a nurse but was softened to God's call to full-time ministry. I surrendered to that call and went to Bible college part way through my nursing studies. I then thought I was to be a missionary and work with children's ministeries or possibly ladies. I found a man who was called to the ministry who believed he was called to the foreign field too. Fast forward a few years into our marriage. I had been praying and praying about which country we were called to. I had a few in my mind and just wanted confirmation from God in my husband's life. He came home one night to tell me he thought he was being called to youth here in America... I was floored. I went as far as to question God and ask if I had married the wrong man! Haha. Youth was NOT on my map let alone my plan! (Especially not American youth). I had to once again surrender my plan. I don't want to give you the impression that it was a simple thing or that once I surrendered I was magically shifted from the directional mindset to the guided mindset. I still have to let go of desires and plans and let God move me and lead me daily.
Something incredible does happen, however, when we stop living by walking the EXPECTED path but instead walk the path EXPECTANTLY. Our view shifts from self and what WE desire to looking around us to see what may be heading our way. It makes life exciting and surprising. It shifts our emotions, our focus and our steps. Instead of walking a straight and well thought out line we end up veering to take a detour or pivoting to head a new direction that perhaps we had never thought of before. Just because we do not end up at the place we thought we were headed it does not mean we are missing our mark in life. It means we are using our life to the greatest potential. We are seeing what is around us and we are more sensitive to changes we need to make. Life is not a straight line. We are not getting to the end with as few detours as possible. Instead it is a road trip where we want to find the greatest sights. It is a journey of weaving and looping. There are detours and route changes. Perhaps you end up in a completely different spot than you imagined. How foolish it would be to see a sign that says bridge out ahead but because the bridge is on the path marked on our map we continue towards it ignoring all warnings. We do that so much in life though. We try to force God's hands. Sometimes he allows us to go to where we had planned and we often end up hurt. Sometimes he forces our hand in other ways giving us no choice but to turn to him for direction. Why do we allow it to get to that point? Is it just out of stubbornness or our desire to not look like we failed? The beautiful thing about walking expectantly in life is that as long as you are walking hand in hand with Jesus wherever​ you end up will be at His feet and frankly that is the most glorious place to be!