Psalm 147

Last Sunday I woke up feeling especially tender toward our adoption. I just felt homesick for our babies. No reasons. Just a deep sense of missing these babies I've never laid eyes on. Then at Newsong we meditated on this Scripture [below] as a worship response. It was timely for me as the service was filled with orphan and baby talk. I spoke to our congregation about the good news of 1,104 children being sponsored from Malawi. I led our infant dedication part of the service. Dave Gibbons talked about the "maturity of a church is measured by how we care for widows and orphans". And a Newsong couple shared their miraculous adoption story. It was pretty emotionally intense, but this passage nourished me...

Psalm 147

¹ Praise the LORD.
How good it is to sing praises to our God,
how pleasant and fitting to praise him!

² The LORD builds up Jerusalem;
he gathers the exiles of Israel.

³ He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.

⁴ He determines the number of the stars
and calls them each by name.

⁵ Great is our Lord and mighty in power;
his understanding has no limit.

⁶ The LORD sustains the humble
but casts the wicked to the ground.

⁷ Sing to the LORD with thanksgiving;
make music to our God on the harp.

⁸ He covers the sky with clouds;
he supplies the earth with rain
and makes grass grow on the hills.

⁹ He provides food for the cattle
and for the young ravens when they call.

¹⁰ His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse,
nor his delight in the legs of a man;

¹¹ the LORD delights in those who fear him,
who put their hope in his unfailing love.

Prayer Request

Dear Blog Friends and Followers,

I wanted to give you an update on our adoption and some potential really good news for us. As you know, we were told recently that our adoption would now require 2 trips to Ethiopia – the 1^st trip to approve our adoption in court and the 2^nd trip for the US Embassy paperwork and bring them home. This would be hard on a number of obvious levels. Yet we obviously haven’t signed up for our adoption because it’s easy or predictable. We’ve been doing our best to trust God in the process, knowing he knows best for our kiddos and us.

But we got an email from our case manager Friday that explained that families who’ve already received a referral and had medical documents and paperwork submitted to the courts before May 9^th would be exempt from the new 2 trip policy. So I asked our case manager if we got our referral this week if there would be any chance that we could escape the 2 trip requirements. She just emailed me back this morning and said,

“There's only a very slim chance that if a referral came this week, it would be ready to submit before the deadline. We serve a mighty God and He can do anything He so desires, so bring it before the throne and lay it at His feet. It would be something extraordinary for a case to proceed that quickly. Keep it in prayer.”

I think it’s worth keeping in prayer!! I’m going to fast a couple times this week about this request and wanted to ask if you would join us in fasting and prayer? In my mom’s words, “this whole 2 trip thing has never sat right with me and I’ve prayed more about this than most other requests.” Call it mother’s intuition or last nights’ dinner, but all of this doesn’t feel like something to be taken lightly.

At the same time, I really am trusting God with this one. I’m sacrificing my time lines and agendas on the altar so God can do his thing and get all the glory.

Chosen

One of the beautiful things about adopting is that we have an opportunity to say to our little ones, "WE CHOOSE YOU! Out of every child in the world, you have been chosen for us and we have chosen you!" There's something incredibly powerful about being chosen...

• Chosen for a dodge ball game
• Chosen to be hired for a job
  
• Chosen to be a part of a team
  
• Chosen to be someone's spouse
• Chosen to be God's child

The beautiful thing is that we are able to choose our Ethiopian babies because we have been chosen by a Mighty God to be a part of his family. THAT'S why adoption is more than a transfer of paperwork; it is a supernatural transfer in your soul!
A day will come (hopefully sooner than later!) that Brian and I will put this onesie on our little ones and speak into their soul, "I CHOOSE YOU...forever and ever!" Wow, this process is changing me.