Praise Him

Today, I have been missing my daughter a ton. I miss her everyday, but today was hard and I don't know why. I do know that I had a good cry in my car in the grocery store parking lot. The waiting and not knowing when she will be home is so hard. There are still a lot of things that need to happen before we hear that we can go bring her home. I am so ready to hear that things are at least moving along.

I don't want this post to be a sad one, though. There are hard days in adoption, but I praise the Lord everyday because He has allowed us to adopt our daughter.

Before Justin and I were even married we talked about adoption. After we were married and looked into adoption, we decided we would adopt internationally one day when we had enough money saved. In 2009 we knew that we still wanted to adopt and decided we needed to come up with a plan to make that happen. 2009 is also the year our daughter was born in Ethiopia. I don't think it's a coincidence. I just think God was at work.

We came up with a plan. The plan was when Jax was old enough to start preschool I would go back to work and we would continue to live on Justin's sallary. We would save all of my income so that we could pay for an adoption. We thought that sounded like a good plan. I still don't think there is anything at all wrong with that plan. The only problem was it wasn't God's plan for us. As we started looking into country programs and adoption agencies, we knew the Lord didn't want us to wait until we had "enough" money. We knew He wanted us to start then.

We met many adoptive parents who told us that if God was calling us to adopt then He would provide the money. We decided that we would cut back where we could, take some out of savings, and trust God for the rest.

Let me just tell you, all of those people were right. We trusted God to provide and He has provided all we need and more!! We have been blessed by the obedience and generosity of His people. We have been amazed again and again by the perfect timing of our Heavenly Father. When we started the adoption, we decided that above all else, we desired for the Lord to be glorified in our lives. No matter how things turned out, we wanted God to get the glory.

We know without a doubt that God provided everything we needed to bring our daughter, a little girl He created in His image, home. The Lord provided in various ways, but most recently, we were given an opportunity to receive a matching grant with Brittany's Hope. We had to raise $5,000 in order to receive the matching $5,000. We found out today that we met our grant and we will receive $10,000 for our adoption expenses. Praise the Lord!

God has provided every step of the way, but it doesn't mean there haven't been bumps in the road. Just today we had to replace our entire heating and cooling unit in our home. It was not cheap!! We did not expect this and the timing seems awful. If this would have happened 2 years ago, I would have been crying and wondering how we would pay for it. I was tempted to do this yesterday, but I know that it isn't a surprise to the Lord and that He has been so faithful. I can't do anything else, but thank Him for the way He has provided. We have had unexpected car trouble, house repairs, and medical expenses. Those things have not been fun, but we have learned that our God is greater than the troubles of life.

We are firm believers that if God calls you to something, He will provide a way!

Glorify the LORD with me; let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears. Psalm 34: 3-4