A Heart Like His

We are thrilled to be able to share with you the wonderful news that our family has decided to adopt an adorable son from Ch*na! We are happy and truly blessed that God has chosen us again to bring one of His precious treasures home from Ch*na and into our family! We count ourselves so unworthy of this work, but God has a way of choosing exactly those who deem themselves "unworthy" to do His will. I think of Moses and how He needed a "burning bush" to tell him to lead God's people. Well, there haven't been any shrubs on fire at our house, yet, but we certainly have been so blessed to receive more signs, wonders, and confirmations than any human soul needs to KNOW without a SHADOW OF A DOUBT that He is calling us to go in His name. Please follow our Faith Walk to see all that God has accomplished and worked - to His Glory! - in such a short time! We put our trust completely in Him to bring this good work He has started in us and through us to completion. In ourselves, we can do nothing, but with Him, ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE!

I know some may be shaking their heads and saying, "What on earth are they thinking?!?" I know many of you have witnessed first-hand the hard time we went through with the grieving, attaching, and transition of our sweet daughter's adoption. I know there were days that only your comfort and encouragement pulled David and I through. And I know, we struggled to keep our family together and bring a new sense of "normal" back to our lives. I know the enemy loved seeing us struggle and I'm sure he hissed in excitement to see our faith weaken, but Praise God! that though our faith was shaken, He remained ever faithful! How much life has changed for all of us! How much JOY and how much LOVE there is in our home, it is truly overflowing at times, so much so that there are days I just cry happy tears all morning knowing how far she and I have come together.

I guess the unlikelihood of us adopting again seemed HUGE even to us. Considering all that we've been through the last two years, the insanity of it unfathomable, and who would blame us if we never spoke of adoption again. Thinking at the time that my God was just too small to work in my pain and suffering. That all that was left for us was the lingering bitterness about the whole experience. In fact, I think the enemy wanted just that from us - bitterness, complete silence, and total resignation. And so it makes perfect sense to us that pretty much everyone (including some of our family) is having a hard time swallowing this whole idea. I know they would like to "save of us from ourselves", but the truth is we already have a Savior, Jesus Christ, God's Only Son, and he died on the cross for my sin, and he gave up everything to give me eternal life, and I want to live out these days that I have as a sacrificial offering to Him for all that He has done for me. This I believe; the enemy wins every time we allow him to paralyze us in fear instead of trusting in faith that God's Plan A for our lives is better than any Plan B we might think up. We are all eternal souls and in the end no matter how bad things on earth get, God is BIGGER still! I lost that picture of Him for a long, long time, and it is AMAZING what a difference it makes just to remember whose child I really am!

The truth is there are 147 million orphans in our world that wait for their forever family to come...

God is calling us to grow our hearts to meet their needs. While we can't do everything, we can do something, and the something He is asking our family to do is to adopt. So here we are then, embarking on another journey of faith, despite our battered and bruised egos, the broken vessels that we are, lifted up and ready to be poured out for His Kingdom, open hearts ready to receive His assignment, ready to bring Him All the Glory! Completely trusting in the God of the Universe to not only show up, but to help us climb up, this HUGE mountain that He has set before us. And it seems that before we can even begin to be equipped for the climb, we must first descend the mountain we are already standing on - the summit here is full of JOY. This is the safe place that He has brought us too where peace and healing have been poured out and all is well with our little piece of the world. Yes, even though it feels like we have only just arrived at this summit of calm and comfort and that He has only given us just enough time to take in the view from the top with a few deep breaths, we know that it is His will for us to follow Him back down it again. Back into the hurting masses, where hopeless hearts beat in a broken rhythmic pattern of sorrow, where children cry out for the loving touch of a mother, a father.

We don't know what the view from the next mountain will look like, but we are trusting that just as God will once again travel with us, before us, and behind us, and continue to meet us where we are and help us when we are in need. Our hearts desire nothing more than to serve Him. To end our journey of faith, with a heart more like His.