. . . and it is marvelous in our eyes! Psalm 118:23
One week ago today, the treasure hunt our family had been on
since we started our adoption process back in October, took a very miraculous
and marvelous turn! What we thought at
first was a trying detour on our long journey, ended up being a beautiful, scenic
tour of our Lord’s amazing awesomeness!
What just happened to our family is so wonderful, it is
dream-like! Truly our dream-come-true! I can hardly even think of words to describe
just how marvelous what God has done really is.
But I want so much to somehow declare how indescribably good and gracious
God has been to us. I am sure many of
you have experienced this “speechlessness” over amazing things God has done in
your lives! We’d really love to hear
your testimonies, of how you “tell of His wonders” in your lives!!
So, as you all know, our family felt led by the Lord to
adopt again, and began the process back in October. We started our international home study in
mid-November, and it all went very well up until we received the finished first
draft of it on January 10th.
Since then, we have been experiencing a very unusual delay in getting it
finalized. It has been quite
unsettling, but a perfect opportunity to practice patience and “being still and
knowing that He is God.” (We still have
not heard back from either of the agencies that we have been working with. It seems to have come to a complete standstill.)
That same Thursday night when we received the first draft of
the home study, Ted sent an email to our adoption agency in Colorado stating that
there was something that appeared in our home study that was not accurate or
truthful, and that he wanted it to be re-written to reflect our true, Biblical
beliefs/practices. This was the
beginning of quite a stressful and delicate situation! On Monday morning, while we waited anxiously for
a response from our adoption agency, we received an email instead,
out-of-the-blue, from Benjamin’s very special social worker, responding to an
email I sent to her in December. This
meant a lot to us, as we felt like the timing of her email was an encouragement
from the Lord to “remember” all the miraculous things HE had done for us in our
process with Benjamin.
As we all prayed and waited on the Lord for this situation
to be resolved, He was indeed answering and working all things together for
good! Back in October, our 3-year foster
license was due to expire, and we got a call from our foster licensor asking us
to PLEASE consider renewing it. We told
him that we would like to keep it current, so we did the few things we needed
to do. He told us that he would not be
able to get out to our house for the home visit until January, but not to
worry, that we would still be licensed during this time. So, that was our plan, until we decided to
adopt internationally, and I emailed him to let him know. (This would definitely put us over our limit
to be able to take in a foster child.)
When we did not receive an email back from him, or a call in January, we
assumed this meant that he figured it would not be prudent for him to come out
and renew our license.
Then, week before last, we received a call from him asking
if he could come out in the next week or two for a home visit. We were excited, as we still felt like it was
a good idea to keep all our options open for orphan care. So we talked about several possible dates
and times that would work for all of us, and we landed on last Wednesday at
noon. He showed up right on time, and
we dove in to our interview with him.
Around 12:32 : -), right at the time we were discussing that we would
always want to be able to welcome any biological siblings of Benjamin’s into
our family, the phone rang.
We decided not to answer it at the time, as we were all
right in the middle of the interview, so we let it go to the answering
service. But about 30 minutes later, as we were walking around
the house with Shane, Valerie picked up the message and ran upstairs saying,
“You’re not going to believe this . . . ”
It was a social worker letting us know that Benjamin had a sister born a
week prior, and asking if we would be willing to take her! :-)
What are the odds of such timing? Only God could arrange the timing like that! I wish we could have had that moment on
video, when we were frantically trying to dial all the numbers on our phone to
hear the message. When we finally were
able to get all the digits right to pick up the message, and listen to the
social worker tell us this news on speaker phone, all our mouths dropped wide
open. Shane then began packing up his
things and said he needed to get back to the office right away to write up our
updated home study. : -) The funny thing is, Shane had told us back in
October that a foster license is not mandatory to be able to take in a
biological sibling, so it is not absolutely necessary in this case. But we believe the Lord used this providential
timing of the home visit and phone call to reveal His perfect plan in a very special
way, and let us (and Shane) know that HE is truly directing all our steps.
So the social worker told us that there would be a hearing
the next morning, and after that, she would be calling us with more
details. We waited anxiously for her
next call, which came at around 1:00pm the next day, saying that she would be
placed with us and we began making arrangements to pick her up from her
temporary foster home, which we did on Friday morning.
Now the process begins of waiting on the Lord for His
perfect will and timing in her adoption.
And we’re not sure what will become of our international adoption
process. We’ll be seeking the Lord on
that too!
"O Lord, you are my God;
I will exalt you and praise your name,
for in perfect faithfulness
you have done marvelous things,
things planned long ago."
Isaiah 25:1
<
