asking you to pray

We received some hard news this weekend in regards to our current adoption. In October, our dossier was completed and we began, again, the waiting. We expected a referral for a baby girl sometime in the fall of this new year and were hopeful of traveling to get her in early 2014. It all worked in my mind. Casey would finish up the degree he’s been working on for the past five years in December and then we’d travel, again, to Ethiopia to get our baby.

I was very okay with being in that waiting stage again. Three little boys have me feeling full enough at present that I wasn’t aching to bring another baby home. Not just yet. Next year sounded good.

But, plan as we like, we are not in control. 

We got a very unexpected email last Friday stating that our adoption agency has filed for bankruptcy. They transferred all of their open cases to another agency and it wasn’t until Casey had spoken with those people, very late Sunday night, that the full implications of this news, how we are affected by it, set in.

We were in the worst of three possible scenarios. We had paid in full but did not yet have a referral, so none of that money had been paid out to Ethiopia. In short, we are back at square one.

Casey was travelling this weekend and last night we finally got to sit down and talk. We had been processing all this on our own and it was good to reconnect, to share this stinking, bad news together, to hear each others heart. I was thankful God put our hearts in very similar places.

He said what I’d been feeling all day, what had kept my eyes brimming full despite the sunshine and warmer winds and happy, energetic little boys in rain boots.

It feels like we miscarried a baby.

All that hope and planning and all the weekends this family has sacrificed going without a daddy so that he could work to bring another baby home, it just felt wasted.

Why is it so hard to do what you know God supports? I know His heart is inclined toward the fatherless, the poor and weak, the helpless. Why is it so hard to join Him in doing something about it?

I have been torn up for the last month over how broken this world is. How much evil and injustice and pain is out there, how many aching, anemic souls are dying for want of the living waters that I know and get to drink from.

I have feared what I ought not fear, and been reminded Whom I ought to fear.

I have prayed for wisdom to know what to do.

“Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom”

{job}

My devotion time has had me in the book of Job for the last few weeks. I finished it yesterday. It was very appropriate. Lots of good reminders from that book of Who is in control.

“Who has first given to me, that I should repay him?

Whatever is under the whole heaven in mine.”

Job 41:11

A quick read through the last few chapters of Job won’t leave anyone questioning that God is most certainly, fully in control over this earth and all the inhabitants thereof. That does comfort me, but what comforted me most yesterday, as I sat on my bed with Bible and journal open, the words a blurry mess for the tears uncontained, was this thought~

That big, fearful God who laid the foundations of the earth, hung the stars in the heavens and commands the lightning and thunder, that God weeps with me over this brokenness. I only know that there are millions of little ones in need of a home and loving parents. God knows the name of each one of those 153 million children.  He loves them with the tender love I feel for my Josiah, my Bereket and my Tamagn. He loves them like you love your children. And He weeps for them.

This comforts me, that my God cries with me and collects and cherishes my tears.

My husband is steadfast in his commitment to give a home to one more child in need. I am glad of it and stand beside him. We both agree that him being gone more is not good for our family. We do not have the resources to make up what was lost but we know the One who does. I am just a little bit excited to see what God might do. Please join us in praying His will be done?