Happy Easter

FISH FRY!!!

My sister held a fish fry for us yesterday and it was wonderful, we thoroughly enjoyed the entire day. Ali planned the whole thing, all we did was show up and hang out. My family has always been very supportive of me and my crazy ideas but they have all outdone themselves with this adoption. Sometimes this task God has placed before us seems impossible and in reality it is, to change the lives of orphans is impossible. I do not have the capabilities necessary to minister to orphans, it is impossible to make this all work. We already have 4 children (people like to remind me of this, as if I could ever forget about the 4 little bodies already living in my home), Will is in the Navy and deploys, I home school, our girls are special needs and the list goes on and on. None if it makes sense from my stand point, none of it. But, then He reminds me, "all things are possible with God" (Matt. 19:26); "all things are possible to him who believes," (Mark 9:23). But, in all honesty sometimes I wonder what does that really look like? All things are possible with God but I am the one here who lives in this house who has to care for these children, I am the one who has to teach a deaf child to read, I am the one who writes the checks, I am the one with all these things pressing in around me. Am I alone in this? Has anyone else ever asked these questions? What does it look like, this "anything is possible" thing? Well, this fish fry is what it looks like; when God lays it upon someone's heart to give of themselves to the benefit of another. When someone takes your hand and says I will walk this road with you because I love you and because God loves you. When you reach out to someone that God has laid on your heart, you are touching them with the love of God and you are confirming in their heart, their soul, their spirit that they are in fact loved by the creator of the universe and He has not forgotten about them. No, God will not come down and prepare the spaghetti for dinner tonight, or teach our math lesson today or many of the other things on my ever growing to do list. Chances are that He is not going to be checking off things on your to do list either, but He will send others (like my wonderful sister) who will stand with you and as they stand with you, know that He stands with you also. Sometimes I look back over a day, a year, my life and I can feel and see that He has carried me, always. Sometimes, it is in a very tangible way (such as yesterday) but many times it is just a gentle strength that lifts me up on high and I realize I am soaring on wings like eagles. Not to say that there is not pain, frustration, exhaustion, confusion or fear because we are in fact human and we do feel the pain of fallen mankind but if we lift up our eyes and allow Him, He will carry us through this life. In actuality that is what He longs to do more then anything; to carry us, to tuck us safely under His arms and keep us in His embrace, His love surpasses anything that we could ever fathom. He keeps no record of wrongs, He sees us for everything He created us to be not for all the things we have done, we are His children and He wants to treat us as such. The only thing we have to do is surrender, to let go of all the things of this world that we hang onto and fall back into the arms of our Abba Father. Just let go, let it all go; the things of this world have nothing of eternal value and the view is so much better from up on high. May we all learn how to surrender completely and to soar high on wings like eagles.

Thank you Ali for reminding me that He is always watching, always caring and providing, He stands guard to my front and to my back and to either side and that all things are possible to him who believe. And I believe, I believe God will do all that He has promised and that He is faithful and able to complete that which He has begun.

Updates and general business

Wow, we have had a busy week and it is only Thursday! A good busy though, a busy full of little people who need and deserve love and as usual, a ton of our adoption paperwork. The update is this: we received our date for fingerprinting from immigration, it is not until the end of April though. I was a little disappointed with the date b/c I was hoping for you know, yesterday for the fingerprinting but alas it is all in God's hands anyway. Will (BJ) called immigration early this week and they informed him not to expect to have an approval letter until mid-June. Once again, slightly disappointing b/c we all know what I was hoping for, yesterday. But, again it is all in God's hands, that is my mantra these days, over and over again, it is all in His hands. We are praying and believing that our paperwork will be assigned to the most efficient immigration case worker known to man and we will see our approval letter much sooner than mid June. So, please pray for this nameless, wonder of all wonders, our case worker who is going to turn out our approval letter like it is their job, because it is in fact their job and they are going to do it beautifully! Thanks for praying with us for this wonderful case worker. I am still cranking out paperwork all the time, right now as we wait for the immigration letter I am focused on grants. So, that is that with our new girls. The other excitement this week has to do with some adorable little people who we were blessed to spend time with. I blogged about them earlier this week, their family was in a tight spot and a woman from our church who is nothing short of a saint took this family of 5 into her home. We have cared for the two older boys off and on this week to give some relief to our friend. Last night I brought the two boys (2 and 1 years old) home with me from church and they spent the night here. After baths, medicine, bottles and the whole family praying for them and over them (during which the 1 year old kept trying to hit his brother and Gracie) they were off to bed. They slept beautifully, not a sound all night; however I woke up off and on and found myself praying for them. Early this morning I packed them up and went to pick up their mom and baby brother and then I dropped them all off with a wonderful ministry that provides families with a place to stay to help get back on their feet. Their mom will be provided with job training, preparation for her GED, WIC, etc and the boys will have a safe, clean environment to be in. It is run by a network of churches who open their churches up to allow the families to stay there with a host family in the evenings. Then they spend their days with the Family Promise ministry working on life skills. Wow!! It is an amazing ministry and I think we all need to prayerfully consider supporting these types of things with our time, energy, money and prayers. They are about the "business of their father" that is for sure. "That which you do unto the least of these you have done unto me." He is so clear about our obligation to care for the least of these around us, He provides no disclaimer or guidelines, He never says, "help them if they are clean and sober" or "if they have submitted a certain number of job applications" or "help them if they are deserving," He just says help them. No qualifications, no exceptions to the rule, just care for them. It is us who decide someone is not worthy of our help; by which we imply that we are worthy of the grace and mercy He showed us which we know is not true. So, why do we freely take God's gifts for us when we were not even slightly worthy of them but then withhold them from others b/c they are addicts, convicts, etc and therefore should be cast aside, left under a bridge or living in their car. Jesus never would have turned them away, NEVER. The Bible does not speak of drug addicts, convicts, dead beat dads, life long welfare recipients because that was not the terminology of their day; they used terms such as tax collector, sinners, women of questionable virtue and so on. But, the message is still the same, love them all; those of questionable values, those that our society considers unworthy of love, those that repeatedly choose a drug over their children, and the list goes on and on. Jesus' message is still the same, care for them as you would care for yourself. In fact, Jesus was so clear with this message that He revealed himself to be the Messiah to the woman at the well, do you know who the woman at the well was? A Samaritan and a woman who had been married 5 times and was living with a man who was not her husband at the time of her meeting with Jesus Christ. He did not turn his back on her, walk away, refuse to converse with her, instead He told her that He was in fact the Christ and offered her living water (John chapter 4.) He showed her unconditional love, her sins were not hidden from the world like we so often try to hide ours, no, all of society knew all about her. She was the one that all the other women gossipped about at church potlucks, at Bible studies, in the lunchroom. She is the one that we all want to believe that we are nothing like but in fact we are one in the same, sinners in the need of a Savior. And Jesus was just that for her, a Savior. While we were busy turning our back on her b/c she was of an unsavory character He was busy building a relationship with her. If we are being honest with ourselves then we must admit that we were all the "woman at the well" at one time in our lives and He came to us and ignored our ugly, overwhelming sins and extended all that He is to us. So now, we are cleaned up and playing the part of a good Christian and maybe, just maybe forget that we were that woman at the well and we turn our back on her. They do not look like us, act like us, talk like us, think like us, they often make horrible decisions that bring pain into others' lives; often times nothing about them seems right, the way they smell, the way they move, the way they speak or don't speak and that is exactly who Jesus was talking about. You all know what I mean, they make us uncomfortable, they make us hold onto our children and our wallets a little tighter but instead of turning away for them it is time to turn towards them. Take them out to lunch, speak to them, pray with them and you will find that they are the woman at the well, that they are in fact me, you, all of us before Christ came to us and extended us a cup of living water.

Blessings

We are still waiting and praying and realizing more and more each day how good God is to us. We have not heard anything more from immigration so we continue to pray for a quick return, we have completed the majority of our portion of the dossier so when immigration is complete we should be ready to mail everything to our agency pretty. I am also working on a few grants that will hopefully assist us in aquiring all the funds we need to complete the adoption. The grants are very similar to the adoption process, a ton of paperwork! I wish God had gifted me with an abundance of administration skills but He has choosen to stretch me instead. BJ and I have felt from the start that God would provide every dollar that we need to bring the girls home and yesterday and today He proved us right. At church yesterday our pastor asked us after service if we had heard about the check they received on behalf of our adoption. As it turns out a friend of BJ's from TX (God bless TX) had made a considerable donation. It is hard to explain how wonderful it feels when others partner with us to see the fulfillment of our vision come to fruition. It builds confidence in me as we continue to step out in faith to see how God is speaking to others about our girls. Today there was a knock at our backdoor and our little neighbor who plays all the time with Gracie was standing there with a check for me, she says, "here is fresh cilantro and a check and can I play with Gracie?" So sweet I almost cried (if I did that sort of thing.) Any rate, all of that to say, that God is good and I am truly blessed by those that have been so generous to us. Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts. Right now we have two little extra bodies around our house... Ok, those two little extra bodies ended up waking up so I was not able to finish that post. I do want to tell you all about them though, they are truly precious little boys and they need our prayers. Their parents are in a very difficult place in their lives right now and one of the families from our church opened their home up to them. There are a total of 3 boys; aging 2,1, and 4 months. We had the older two boys yesterday and they will be here again today to try and help provide some relief for our friend from church who has quite a full household right now. The children are adorable and I enjoyed having them here to spend time with me and to pray for them and over them. It is hard to watch innocent children, so full of potential and very much deserving of a bright future fall victim to the mistakes of their parents. Every choice we make, whether a Godly choice or not impacts those that share our lives with us and that is never more apparent then in our children. We so often want to believe that we live in a vacuum; that if we choose to damage ourselves then it is only us that suffer, when we all know in our hearts that that is a lie. John 8:32 "You will know the truth and the truth will make (set) you free." The truth is that we are interconnected with our God and with each other and every word, every choice, every thought directly impacts those that we love. If we absorb this truth into every fiber of our being it will set us free in our families; we live in complete freedom to speak words of life into each other and to make choices that bring life into our homes. We can impact people with God's love and forever help shape the course of their futures, we can sow seeds that will bring forth much fruit in their lives. Nothing about this is easy, especially as a parent or as a spouse, these people that are so tightly woven into our daily lives can at times be trying and stretch our faith and our patience way past a comfortable level. Which is exactly why God built these relationships into the very heart of each of our lives because He knew it would drive us to our knees in prayer and into His arms as He asks us to push way past our capabilities. Every minute of everyday needs to be spent in communion with Him, "... be unceasing in prayer." How else can I make choices hour after hour, day after day that bring love and life into my family without being in constant contact with the Giver of life and love? I can't, it is impossible, I have tried and I have failed over and over and have brought pain into my home. I don't want to go back, ever. God; teach me to love with your love, speak your words and to be so much more of You and nothing of me. Please pray with us for this family, for wisdom, for freedom, for breakthrough and for healing. God's hand is upon this family and he loves these little boys with complete and utter devotion, pray for us that we can love them as He does.

I am suppose to be on a run right now, but I am using a sore throat as an excuse to sit here and blog instead. I am not sure my waistline agrees with my decision but that is the way it goes sometimes. I received an email this morning notifying me that my immigration paperwork has been received and sent to the appropriate office. In three different places on the email it said "DO NOT REPLY TO EMAIL" which is probably a good thing b/c my first thought was I need to email them and see where they are in the process; are you done? how about now? done yet? wait two minutes and then ask again. I learned that tactic from my children, they are professionals at wearing me down. So, that is the latest; it is there at the correct office and now we wait. Matthew 23: 3 (Jesus speaking about the Pharisees) "So observe and practice all they tell you; but do not do what they do, for they preach, but do not practice." I read this and immediately thought of my children, how often is this true in my life in regards to them? How often do I preach to them but not practice? No one spends more time with me then they do, they know me at my worst. I pray God teaches me to practice and not preach, I pray He gives me the strength to be the person I expect them to be. We so often cut ourselves slack; always have a reason for the things we do or don't do but then do not extend that benefit of the doubt to others. Matthew 23: 10 "And you must not be called masters, for you have one Master, the Christ." We are not to be a master in some one's life and we are not to have any masters before Christ, seems simple enough but when you really stop and focus on what He is telling us it becomes more difficult. A person becomes our master when we stand silent b/c we fear what they may think more then we fear what God thinks of us. Our boss or our career becomes our master when we place more of a priority on company policy then the Truth. Our friends are our master when we don't say the things we know we should say just to avoid their disapproving looks or hurtful comments. Our children act as masters as we jump through hoops to avoid disappointing them or depriving them of so many things that they never needed to begin with. The list goes on and on and I realize that I have many masters in my life sometimes as I worry and fret about what others are saying or thinking about me. But, the sad truth in my life is that the master I so often serve is not God or even others but MYSELF. I am slave to what I want, what I think, what I feel. Am I having a bad day? am I tired or a little strung out? Well then God you are going to have to wait until I get some downtime and meet all my needs. Jesus Christ as my Master means what I want in all areas of my life regardless of how insignificant they may seem have to be under total surrender to Him. Whether I wanted to head in another direction no longer matters. The funny thing is is that when I live my days in this type of surrender; when I say the things I know I should say and hold my tongue when I know I should hold my tongue, when I try to love others with His love, life is so much more wonderful, so much more peaceful, so much more complete. When I surrender to the true Master I find true freedom. God, teach me to live the rest of my days serving only You as my Master. On a completely different note; my younger three kids and I have been trying to grow Triops (a prehistoric little creature) for a Science experiment. And I have just killed my second batch, who knew that growing Triops was so difficult!? Apparently I am Triop KILLER and did not know it! Sad. Cole said to me yesterday that I needed to stop ordering more Triops b/c I am just wasting my money. Wow, from the mouth of babes. The truth hurts sometimes. I saved half the batch from the last order so I am going to go for round 3 with these little buggers, wish me luck!