Fears, Doubts, and Confirmations!

There was a night a couple of weeks ago when Jim and I were on our knees before our Father, asking Him to bring about this thing which He had spoken to us and trusting Him to do so.  It was a powerful time, and we knew without a doubt that we had heard Him and that He was about to do something huge!  That night after we'd gone to bed, I just laid there, suddenly freaking out, and thinking "Noooo!  It's too hard!  It's too scary!  She doesn't even speak English!  I don't want to do this, God!"  Those thoughts just kept coming and God let me wrestle with that all that night and into the next morning.  And then He said to me, "OK.  You don't have to do this.  You can forget about it, and stop talking about it, and stop praying about it, and just keep doing your life as it's been, and go sit on the couch and watch baseball.  OR . . . you can say yes to something hard and scary, and watch Me do something awesome!"

 And so I said, "OK, God.  I chose that.  We want our lives to point to You."  And since that day my focus has remained firm.

Sometimes it's hard to see that this thing will ever happen.  That Vietnam will ever be open to adoption while we're still young enough to do it.  That this sweet little girl will ever be with us.  It seems more impossible every day, especially when we see nothing changing; emails to the orphanage aren't returned; we are turned down for an adoption home study, because no adoption agencies are currently accredited for Vietnam adoptions.  It's easy to get discouraged and think there's no way it will ever happen.  But God is bigger than all of that.  He's not wringing His hands or saying, "Oh dear.  What will I do now?"  He is true to His Word, and speaks confirmations to us all the time:

• Over the past couple of weeks, Jim and I have prayed about who to share our news with.  Some evenings I've been sitting on the couch with my laptop while he is sitting at the kitchen table working on his studies.  I would be asking God to give me wisdom about who to share with, and at the moment I thought of someone, Jim would say from the kitchen, "How about so-and-so?", and it would be the very same name.
• We want to take steps of faith:  Having a home study done.  Learning some Vietnamese.  Getting Joy a passport.  I was thinking about these things the other day, and worrying that it was foolish to do them so early, especially when we have seen nothing changing.  But then God brought to my mind a picture of Noah, building that ark for 120 years when it wasn't even raining!  Later I was telling Jim the things I had been worried about, and he said, "Noah, why are you building that ark?"  God had spoken the very same thing to both of us.
• We are so very thankful for friends and family who support us in following Jesus, and who pray with us and give us encouraging words.  One friend told me that she'd told her husband the day before getting our news that she knew we'd be adopting from Vietnam!  Another friend told us a story of friends who had adopted twin boys from Haiti, and in the photos of these boys were also pictures of their best friend, whom they'd had to leave behind.  Some time later, the family got word that there were several children in Haiti who needed to be placed for adoption quickly.  The family decided to adopt again, and when they go their new referral, guess who the child was?  The best friend of their boys.  :)  When I heard that, it just confirmed to me that God can bring this little girl to us.  He knows her name.  He knows right where she is.  He is able to move people and paperwork and adoption laws and mountains to bring her to our family.  (And how knows what else He has in mind?!)

Be encouraged, friends!  God is at work around us all the time!

"Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah, "I am the LORD, the God of all mankind.  Is anything too hard for me?'"  ~ Jeremiah 32: 26.27

Another picture of "our" little girl, with a friend of Jim's.   :)