Surrendering

For those of you who have been with us from the beginning of this journey, you know that Dave was not at all ready to adopt - until he surrendered and undoubtedly felt God put this deep, deep call in his heart to adopt. Well, the past month or so, we've really been feeling the call to surrender even more. When we started the process, we said "adopt" and "Ethiopia". And, then there's the paperwork and the questions and then you try to figure out what is "just right" for your situation and family and it became more complicated than "adopt" and "Ethiopia". So, we figured the perfect plan for us was one preschooler or early elementary child. So, that's what we requested.....

About a month ago, one of our kids asked us if we should change some of those parameters on our request. We promised that we would consider and pray. We really struggled with all of that pondering and praying. We didn't want to let go of what we thought was best, though we had already had plenty of conversations about changing our parameters.

This past Friday, Dave called and had a good talk with our Social Worker at Adoption Associates (love them!). She too suggested that we could still change our parameters and that in fact she could offer us a referral very quickly if we did. We were CAUGHT! What do we do? If we change the parameters, are we taking things into our own hands, just like Abraham, Sarah and Haggar did? If we stayed the course as we have been, were we missing something God had ready for us? This referral was a different age than what we thought we "should" have - but did we really know what we should have? So our weekend was filled with many conversations, much time in prayer and lots of soul searching. Sunday evening, we spent time with two of the Elders from our church, seeking their prayers and insights.

And, this morning, we officially accepted the referral of a gorgeous little girl - who will turn ONE YEAR old in April!!! We never expected to be accepting the referral of a child so young - but we are so filled with Joy and peace, and already so in love with her!

Yesterday, Vicki shared with Dave that for most of this adoption process, she had been praying that whenever our referral came, that the child would have a Biblical name (our four children all have names from the Bible). Today, as our Social Worker shared the name with Dave, she said, "This is amazing, we rarely can figure out how to pronounce most of the names of our Ethiopian referrals, but this little girl has an English name, and it's one from the Bible even." Friends, God is in the details!

We hope to bring this beautiful young lady to her forever home sometime this summer - please keep praying for all of the rest of the details to fall into place and for she and our current family to be prepared for the adjustments ahead. And, join us in Praising God for His amazing gift in this little life!