The Joy of Watching God Work in Your Life…

I would have posted earlier, but my wife didn’t want me to blog about these blessings until we watched them play out a bit more.  However, I can’t contain my joy any longer and after spilling the beans to Neil over at 4Simpsons a week ago, I am going to share God’s gracious actions in our life with all of you.

As all of you who read this blog know, my wife and I have decided to pursue adoption.   Our choice (and our agreement) resulted from a rather miraculous experience- and I don’t mean simply the miracle of getting your wife to agree with you (you know what I mean husbands).

I had felt led for about a week or more that we needed to pursue adoption.  Yet this prompting wasn’t just a vague “we need to adopt,” but a much more specific, “we need to adopt an older child from the North Carlina foster care system.”  My wife and I had never discussed this kind of adoption before and I didn’t know how she would respond.  One night after we settled in and Sasha was asleep I turned to my wife and told her, “Honey, I think the Lord is leading us toward adoption.”  I shared with her the specifics and she sat there with her mouth agape.  I assumed this meant that she was angry or totally turned off by the idea.  Then she looked me dead in the eyes and said, “I’ve felt led the same way for a while now.”  At that point I was already amazed that God had simultaneously and independently convicted us of the same thing.

Ever since then something strange has been happening.  Several weeks ago, we realized how bad our finances were (living for two months on one months worth of pay).  I told my wife to have faith, God would provide.  She muttered under her breath that the only way it would happen was if someone walked up and gave us money.

Well over the last three days several brothers at church walked up to me and handed me envelopes with cash. I didn’t know what to say.  My wife cried.  And just last night one of my wife’s co-workers called her up and told her that she had just received a rebate check for an overpayment on her mortgage closing.  She said that when she got the check she heard a still small voice say, “This is for Sasha’s Little Gym payment.”  [Little Gym is a gymnastics program that my daughter attends]  My first thought was, boy we could use that $300 bucks for something else, isn’t gymnastics a want?  Then I thought, what does God have in mind?  Someone in that program we need to witness to?

In addition, God has brought into our lives several people- adoptive parents and adoptive children.  In my wife’s class this year she has a student who is adopted.  Moreover, his adoptive mother, as it turns out, was also an adopted child.  One of her coworkers adopted four children, who just moved in with the family this month.   I love watching God put together this tremendous support network even as we’ve just begun this process.

So as this process has already started off so well, I would ask for your continued prayers.  First, pray that the Lord helps us get our house in order financially, spiritually, and every other way necessary so whoever our new children might be, their transition would be gentle, easy, and comfortable.  Second, please pray that God begins preparing the child (or children) that He wishes us to adopt, and that He also prepares us to see that (those) special child(ren) that He  wants us to adopt- and that we might ignore our own selfish preferences.