I can't stop smiling after watching this 5-minute video on the student ministries at Newsong!!! These are my people. I love them. I love our students. I love our staff. I believe so much in the next generation, because they are the NOW generation.They have changed me at the core of who I am. Join me in smiling...
August is arguably my favorite month of the year. It's culmination of summer. It's our anniversary (9 years on the 5th!!). And it's my birthday (31 years young on the 9th). I love this month. All of it. After 9+ months on the wait list, maybe it'll be the month that holds our referral, too!
Which leads me to a prayer request...if I'm doing my math correctly and time lines proceed as predicted (nearly a laughable sentence to write), these next couple weeks are the 11th hour for us. If we'd get our referral in the next 2 weeks, we'd probably have our first Ethiopian court date at the end of October. Then, we'd travel again for our Embassy date 6-8 weeks later to bring them home. Putting all those time frames together, we'd barely make it to bring them home by the end of 2010. If you've been following our journey for more than a few posts, you know this would be a huge deal - emotionally and spiritually - for us. The other factor, is financial. The U.S. government gives a great adoption tax credit for the year you complete your adoption. But if we don't complete our adoption in 2010, we'll have to wait an additional year for a substantial and very helpful tax refund for our expenses. This would be huge and hard to wait for with the expenses involved in adoption and (oh yeah!) parenting!
I've been spending a lot of time meditating these days in Psalm 40. I'm continuing to practice waiting patiently (verse 1), but verse 13 hit me today as a call for help to my God...
Please, Lord, rescue me!
Come quickly, Lord, and help me.
A few other psalms have resonated deeply:
"You are my refuge and my shield; I have put my hope in your word." Psalm 119:114
"Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him." Psalm 62:5
Yet at the end of August, my hope is in God. I wait for him, not for a referral. Still, God invites us to make our requests known to him because he cares. As Psalm 40 says, he turns his ear to hear our cry.
Today was a great day! This morning was rainy and chilly outside, so I curled up on my couch, sipped my cup of delicious Ethiopian Gobena Coffee, and continued reading a book I've fallen in love with: Lost Women of the Bible. Just as the sky was gray outside, my spirit's been a littl
e gray these past few weeks. God's just been silent. It's felt like nothing is happening with our adoption. Then, I read this about Hannah, an Old Testament heroin who struggled for years with the pain of an empty womb.
Hannah was as yet unaware of how much God was doing in the silence. God's silence is not an accurate way to measure what he is doing. It's easy to forget he often does his best work when, so far as we can tell, he doesn't seem to be doing anything at all. But looking back on those long agonizing stretches of God's silence, most of us will say those were the times in our relationship with God when he was doing the most. In Hannah's case, although there was no physical evidence of his activity - no thunderbolt, no voice from heaven, no positive pregnancy test - God was doing a mighty work in Hannah's heart.
The silence has been deafening, confusing, and unnerving on my worst days. Then, an email came today.
Our case manager emailed to let us know that we are "on deck" for a referral. THE NEXT REFERRAL WILL BE OURS! The stretching part of the email was asking if we were open to potentially receiving a referral for our older child being up to 4 years old. Hmmm. After a couple hours of processing with Brian and my dear friend, Erin, we said YES.
We simply feel like we need to remain open to whatever God might have for us. We're already approved for a child up to 4 years old. Maybe there's a reason? Maybe there's a little one over 3 years old who's supposed to be a Diaz? Maybe God just wants to test our trust in him more? Maybe he's not done stretching us? The truth is, our entire journey toward becoming parents has been about releasing expectations, desires, time lines, and letting go so God can do his thing.
God knows the desire of our hearts: 2 biological siblings - boy under 3; girl under 1. But if he matches us to kids that don't meet those qualifications, we will say YES. We will obey. We made that commitment years ago when we started this process. And we trust that God knows best for us and our 2 babies.
PLEASE continue to pray for us and our babies. We won't know when THE CALL will come, but we are hopeful it's soon. There's still so much that needs to be worked out from our perspective. But tonight we celebrate!
GENERAL DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on this site are April's alone and do not represent the views of any ministries or organizations in which she is affiliated. (I'm told this is important to say.)
Coaching and training leader to their fullest potential. Author of a youth worker book. Available for speaking to teenagers, youth workers, women, and churches.
