faith

we were discussing in our small group last week what brings us to greater faith - relationships, circumstances, private disciplines, or service opportunities. without even having to put much thought into it, my answer was circumstances. pivotal circumstances that God uses to grow my faith.

we are in the middle of one of those.

faith. believing that God is going to do something.

money...we started with NOTHING for this adoption. God has provided and continues to provide. as we get closer and closer to traveling the big chunks of money are coming due and some of the estimations we have been working with look like they are going to be low. do i think God knew that? yes. do i think God is going to provide? yes. i would have to agree with eric, "i can say with almost more faith than i have ever had before, God is going to provide the money."

a little girl...we started into this special needs adoption knowing that we could not
adequately care for a child with huge medical needs. we knew God was leading us to pursue a special needs adoption but were stepping out in faith, believing God would choose the perfect little girl for our family. no, we haven't had sarahjoy all checked out by the doctors in america, but we are trusting that God knows every little thing in her body and he has not sent us more than we can handle. in our imaginings we dreamed of a little girl who was two years old, had a minor heart defect, was potty trained and sleeping through the night! nothing like asking for specifics. well, i think God might have seen fit to give us our heart's desire.

timing...we're still holding on to faith for this one. we desperately want to have our little girl home for christmas. is it a big deal? well, no, not in the scope of terrorist attacks and earthquakes. but she is our little girl. and i can't imagine celebrating without her. just imagine if you had to send one of your kids away for christmas (which i realize some of you know this pain far more personally due to family situations). it hurts and no one would ever wish that on someone else. bottom line, we are holding on to faith that God would bring us our little girl soon.

when we started this journey the word 'faithful' kept ringing in my head. in fact, i tried to find the chinese word for faithful as i thought we might name our little girl that. clearly God had a plan, which he knew far before we mailed the first set of documents. he has used this journey to build in us a faith far greater than what we had when we started. and hopefully, he is using it to build a faith in others. maybe even using sarahjoy's story to bring someone to a saving faith.

we're holding on. we have our first phone conference with our agency and our traveling partners (2 other couples) on wednesday. we should find out all sorts of fun stuff including...............our estimated travel dates.

sweet sarahjoy,
we love you more than you can even dream of.
your room is ready.
your clothes are laid out.
your sisters can hardly stand themselves.
your brothers are loading their guns to protect you.
your daddy can't wait to love you.
and i, think about you every minute of the day.

you are our daughter, our sister, our niece, our granddaughter.

we can't wait to celebrate God's faithfulness on christmas eve.
with tears running down our cheeks.
holding the very evidence of God's faithfulness.

i love you.

mommy