No longer living safe

I feel like God brings things that I need to learn in waves. Maybe because I have to be knocked over in order to hear them. God is faithful to bring up the same message until I begin to get it. Lately, the theme has been living out loud, live like your dieing, don't live the safe life, take chances for God, ect. Our church has been talking about "the end times", and with that asking the questions- What are we putting off that we really need to be doing now? What is important to us? What do we need to be doing while we wait for Jesus to return? He IS coming back and we do not know the day or time, so in a churchy kind of way- are we ready? I feel like for the first time in my life I could listen to that message being preached and actually think of some examples.
I am risking my heart and basically our bank account to follow God's plan to adopt. I am jumping off the edge of that cliff and praying that God is big enough to provide the finances to complete our adoption, and the faith to raise an adopted child- that is probably one of the most scary and trusting things I have ever done!
Dave is in school and working at our church so that he can go into the schools and bring the Gospel to lost students. I can only imagine what God will do with that. We cannot out give or out trust God. He will always out bless and out provide us.
I am trying to be bold and let the people I work with see the hope that I have in Christ. I am trying not to keep this amazing gift I have to myself. To share in actions, but also in words. I don't want to just be the nice girl at work, but to have an answer for what I believe. His word will not return void.
It is amazing to me to learn lessons like this one. If it were up to me I would be living the safe, easy, middle of the road life. I love comfort. I am not one to take any kind of risk, or do anything out of the ordinary of people's expectations. I am that girl clinging to the balance beam of life content to be safe. Never to ripple the waters of this world. I would probably be a consumeristic Christian who goes to church to grow, but not serve. Goes to work to make money, but not impact lives for Christ. Goes through life getting things done, completing the routine, but never stopping to ask herself what God really wants from me. It took the grace of God and the little wake up calls of life not turning out quite like I thought it would to open my eyes to this crazy life God has for us if we will only make small steps of faith.
I have so much to learn, but I pray that what I have learned from these trials will not be forgotten. When I get to Heaven I want to know that I did something to bring glory to God, or had an impact on someones eternity. What I am thankful for most of all is trial because through trial I have learned perseverance and through that I have become more rooted in my belief of an abundant life through living for God's will and not my own.

CELEBRATE!!!

It is time to celebrate- I mailed the paperwork off yesterday!!!!!!!!! It feels amazing to have it out of this house and on its way to the right place. Unfortunately, I am celebrating temporarily by myself because Dave is gone on staff retreat. I cannot explain the weight that lifted off my shoulders as I watched the very nice woman at the UPS store put all of that precious material into an envelope and seal it. Even that experience was sweet- the woman at the UPS charged me less to notarize our papers and copy them. God has been so good to shower small gifts of love and assurance on us through this process. Now we will take the time to tie up loose ends (I am not counting my chickens before they hatch- they may want more paper work from us), set a home visit up, and set up a date for the informational weekend. During this process just taking baby steps forward is such a gratifying feeling.
On a side note I am very glad to have this blog as an outlet for what is going on. Somehow I feel more connected to people. I feel like I can share our progress and our story of adoption, which in many cases during real life I don't get to share. It is tempting to feel like you are alone in this process, or that you are the only one excited about doing paperwork. But for me paperwork is my pregnancy process,adoption updates are my ultrasound pictures, and talking with our adoption agency is our doctors appointments. I know that so much of the adoption process isn't glamorous or exciting, but it is our way of experiencing bringing a child into our world. I want very much to feel like we have this huge family just as excited and just as ready as we are to meet this baby. That has been one of my deepest prayers. So, if you have been one of those amazing encouraging people who have emailed, facebooked, commented on our blog, or said an encouraging word- thank you. You will never know just how much we long for that and need that. You are truly a part of something we hope brings amazing amounts of glory to God.

Still Working...

I have been chatting with a lot of people lately who have mentioned that I haven't updated our blog in a while, so here is an update. We are still working on our home study paper work, which has been a true labor of love. Until this point I have patiently moved through our paperwork and been able to remind myself that this is all for the love of our child- and then I got the home study packet in the mail. It has been so thick and so long and my patience in this process has at times wavered. I have wanted to cry and believe the lie that this will never happen, and at other times I have seen God move in amazing ways (God appointed an amazing woman at the Clerk of Courts to give us our background checks in one day and free of charge). The closer we get to being done with the home study paper work the more anxious I get! I have to take moments every day to be still before the Lord and pray for patience. In many ways this process has been similar to pregnancy: I have been tired and had many sleepless nights. I look at the timeline and think will this child ever be here? I anticipate what he/she will look like, act like, ect. Even the labor pains of going through something uncomfortable in order to meet our sweet little one! Please continue to pray for us as we fight our way through this process. Pray for patience and endurance. Pray for speed through the rest of the process. Pray for our future little one that he/she is being knit together according to God's perfect plan, and for our future birth mother as she will begin to make one of the hardest choices in her life. We will let you know when the home study paper work is sent in (there will be A LOT of rejoicing), and after that the agency will contact us to set up an appointment to come see our house and do our interviews. We will also attend a weekend information meeting...and then we will see!