Be Careful What You Pray For......

June 5 - The past two months have been a waiting game for Jason and myself. We are not only waiting on our little girl in China to pick up and bring home to be a part of our family, but waiting on calls and emails from a company that Jason has been interviewing with. After months of uncertainty and changes with Jason's software consulting job, we started thinking  it was time for Jason to pursue other job options. However, the bad part is that while we are in the middle of the adoption process, we have been advised to not make any MAJOR changes to our lives. A major change being defined as a job change or address change looks bad on our dossier paperwork and will just cause problems and delays. Since we were not far enough in our adoption process, i.e. our homestudy and dossier is not completed yet, we felt we needed to look into this option. We put a halt on our adoption for Jason to pursue a different job. That was a little over 2 months ago. During this 2 months I have had CCAI asking me for paperwork that I could not fill out until we knew where Jason would be working. I have had our homestudy agency emailing me asking where were in the job pursuit so that we could schedule our homestudy meetings. So after almost 4 interviews and 2 months of time a proposal was given to Jason on a job and it was not what we were expecting. It was disappointing. The entire 2 months I just ached in my heart thinking our little girl is waiting for us and we are holding up this process. O.k. God, what are you doing? Why? Are we doing something wrong?
This brought us to a place of pleading and prayer, asking God what we were to do. Should Jason stay with the company he has been working for not knowing when the next paycheck will come, (One of the changes that has taken place with his job is that he gets paid when clients pay so we went nearly 3 months before seeing a check.) or cut a huge chunk of our budget, perhaps sending our kids to a different school, and take this new job, also knowing it is going to take more time from our adoption to get information sent off about this job change. Pleading and prayer, I tell ya! Finally, on Friday I came to my breaking point. I literally wept for our daughter in China. I was ready to tell CCAI that they should find other parents for her because we cannot give them answers and paperwork they need right now. I was weeping nearly the entire night ready to give up the little girl I feel God has called us to bring into our family. Just a side note: I started teaching summer Sunday School and a verse we talked about today was Psalm 30:5b "weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning." I lived the verse out. That night I wept and wept. What are we to do? How can this be part of Your plan, Lord? Then it came to me, and this thought has come to me before, but it was very clear now. You see it takes a few times for something to occur before I REALLY GET IT! From the beginning of this adoption journey Jason and I had prayed and asked others to pray that we would remain humble throughout this process. Adoption, being such an open and visual process, can become a very prideful and boastful thing to the parents. People come up to us and say, "oh what a wonderful thing you are doing. Good job." We never wanted this to become anything we have done but what Christ is doing through us. We want His name to become famous through this, not ours. I think of the verses in Philippians where Paul talks about putting confidence in Christ and not our own flesh. "But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ." Philippians 3:7.  I think the Lord was putting us through this entire holding process to keep us humble. There is absolutely no way we are doing this ourselves, but He who works all things to His glory. He is keeping us humble. On Saturday morning Jason and I sat down, prayed, and talked about what we needed to do. We both came to a unified decision that Jason will continue to work for the consulting group he has been working with and we are completely trusting that God will provide what we need. Jason will do this until this adoption is complete and we have our little girl home. In the midst of all this possible job change there were more opportunities that had come up. Keeping this current job gives Jason some flexibility to possibly pursue those opportunities once our little girl is home. After we discussed this decision and went on with our day, I felt peace. I cannot speak for Jason but I think he felt the same. Jason went out to get the mail and came in with a check from his consulting work. HELLO!!!

So, I sent off an email to our homestudy agency to set up a meeting and get our homestudy done and I was able to send in all the information CCAI needed to lock us in as parents of little Lu Lu (our nickname for our China doll). As I like to say, GAME ON! We will now be busy doing whatever needs to be done to get Lu Lu home. So be careful what you pray for......you may just find yourself in unchartered waters. : ) The second part of Psalm 30: "rejoicing comes in the morning" came as I drove to the Butterfield trail later on Saturday morning. The song "I Lift My Hands" by Chris Tomlin came on the radio. I was by myself and cried tears of joy. Listen to the lyrics and be blessed. 

Soli Deo Gloria!