Big News!!!

First, I want to wish everyone a belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We had a busy and joy-filled holiday season. We spent Thanksgiving with friends, had a visit from my mom in early December, worked on photo book projects for the grandparents, celebrated Christmas at home, and then went to visit John's sister and her family in San Diego over the New Year holiday.

There is a reason this Christmas was especially joyful for our family. It is because we were celebrating the amazing news we received right before Thanksgiving. John's deployment was cancelled!!!!

I was completely shocked when John called to tell me. I kept asking him, "Is this for real?" He already had his orders and flight arranged. He had even been to some of his pre-deployment training and was just days away from leaving for more training. A cancellation at this point is highly unusual. I think it took 2 weeks or more for the news to finally sink in; I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and for him to be re-tasked. But it didn't and he hasn't been. As of now, John is not scheduled to be deployed again, obviously this can change at any moment in the military, but for now we are rejoicing that he is home with us.

When we received the news back in August, we were absolutely heartbroken. Deploying at this time would mean John would have missed Jonah’s homecoming from Korea and would not meet his second son until after his 2nd birthday. In addition, it would mean that I would have the incredibly difficult task of going through the transition period with Jonah by myself, a time when he will likely be grieving hard and adjusting to such a traumatic change. Due to the need to establish a secure attachment with us first, I wouldn’t have been able to allow anyone else to help care for him during this time. Needless to say, we felt completely overwhelmed and unsure of how we would get through this. All we could do was put it in the Lord’s hands; we felt certain He was at work in our situation and knew we were not to fight this. We desired God’s will and trusted that He would work things out for His glory and see us through this situation. That was our prayer.

In addition, many other people were praying for us, my mom’s church, family members, friends, my friend Wendi’s mom along with her team of intercessors, and pretty much anybody who heard about our situation.

But never in a million years would we have guessed how God would work things out! He answered in the most miraculous way and we are so grateful.

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21

The question I have been asked most often is "why?" The truth is we can't really give any earthly reason as to why; we don't really have an explanation. It is God's grace and mercy. Not only was there Jonah's homecoming, but there was the issue of John's safety. We found out that John was tasked to be a part of team that would be going "outside the wire" as it's often called, which is incredibly dangerous and is how most non-combatants are killed. I honestly feel like God spared John's life. In addition, based on the behavior that we saw from Joshua after John returned from training, we believe that a deployment would have been seriously damaging to John and Joshua's relationship. Joshua was very close to his foster father in Korea and therefore has had a difficult time bonding to John (attachment was difficult for both of us, but more so with John).

There are some who are inclined to think that it is because President Obama was re-elected; I have no idea whether that was an direct or indirect factor or not. But what I can tell you is that God has been moving the hearts of kings and leaders for thousands of years (see Ezra 1:1) in order to accomplish His purposes. What I can also tell you is that 2 more people in John's clinic have been tasked to deploy (not because John's was cancelled) and I know of others who husbands have just recently deployed.

I also want to be clear about something else. I don't believe this happened because we had the right number of people praying, "gave it all up to God," prayed just the right prayer, or anything else. So often you hear people say how they just did ________ and boom, their prayer was answered - they had a miracle pregnancy, got married, found a job, got healed, etc. Having been on the receiving end of this type of statement during our years of waiting for a child, I know how painful it can be to hear this, as if we are the ones in control and if you just do this, your problem will be solved. Sometimes you pray, surrender, ask others to pray with you, give it all up to God, and then God says no. It is not because of anything you did or didn't do, it is because God in His sovereignty said that was not His plan for you, at least right now. I don't know why we received this miracle; we feel completely undeserving of it. We are grateful and humbled by it. It did not happen because we did just the right thing, it was God in His sovereignty working out his plan. If you are facing the deployment of your spouse or family member, please know my heart and my prayers are with you. I don't mean to cause you more pain in sharing our news. I only want to give thanks to God and tell of His "wonderful deeds" because this was all Him.

"I will give thanks to you, Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonderful deeds.” Psalm 9:1

A Dream Come True

During our years of waiting to become parents, one of the hardest times for me was the start of fall. That's when everyone starts posting all the adorable pictures of their kids at the pumpkin patch. I am not sure why these were so hard for me, maybe because fall is my favorite time of year. But each year my heart would ache and I would dream of just maybe someday taking a trip to the pumpkin patch with my own child.

Last year, Joshua was newly home, but because this was something I had always wanted to do, I pushed to go, a big mistake. It was pretty much a disaster. Joshua clung to me in absolute fear. How I wish I could go back and tell the me of one year ago to just be patient, the time would come. In fact, I would tell any adoptive family with a newly home child to give it at least 6 months to a year (and sometimes it is much longer), until then have your expectations around holidays low, don't push to do things your child may not be ready for, and don't compare yourselves to the other families that traveled around the same time as you. I wish I had known these things back then.

But what a difference a year makes. Our day could not have been more perfect; it was almost magical. It was actually quite chilly the morning we went, making it actually feel like fall here in Arizona! It was also quite windy, which wasn't so great for my hair, as you will see in the pictures below. But it didn't matter. Joshua loved it and we had a great time. He is obsessed with anything green right now, so he kept pointing to the green (unripe) pumpkins and saying, "green, green, green." Thankfully, he didn't get upset when I told him we couldn't get a green one, we had to get an orange one.

Here is our day in pictures, warning be prepared for picture overload!

Riding out to the pumpkin patch on the tractor:

Heading out to the patch:

Picking out our pumpkin:

Picture with mommy:

Heading back with our pumpkins:

Family photo:

Pumpkin carving:

 

Pumpkin #2:

 Posing with the pumpkin he picked out, picked because it had green :-)

 (This is his "cheese" - shoulders raised, tongue up)

And here with the finished product:

It was completely unintentional, but our pumpkins actually represent our family of three very well, don't you think? It was a day dreams are made of with the little boy who is "immeasurable more" than I ever dreamed.

I am so very blessed.

A New Creation

Thanks to all who prayed for our home visit and individual interviews yesterday. It lasted about three and a half hours and I think everything went fairly well. But man did she dig deep into our backgrounds and family history. Our previous social worker mostly stuck with what was in our autobiographies. To say that John and I had difficult childhoods is an understatement. And she really delved into everything.  The thing is if she had not directly asked the questions, I would not have told her some of these things. But when directly asked about something, I knew I needed to be truthful regardless of the consequences. Our pastor had just preached on integrity and how seriously the Lord takes lying this past Sunday.

"The LORD detests lying lips, but he delights in men who are truthful." Proverbs 12:22 

It was emotionally exhausting. She even said as she was leaving that I might find myself feeling exhausted the rest of the day because it was a lot of "stuff" to bring out. I really appreciated her sensitivity and her assurance that everything was okay and that nothing we told her would be a problem. Convincing myself to take her at her word has been another matter entirely. For the rest of the day I just felt a heaviness in my heart, and an overall feeling of "yuck." I continually had to remind myself of the Truth:

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" 2 Corinthians 5:17

I have been washed by the blood of Jesus and in Christ I am a new creation. Praise be to God!

Joy is Coming

Life feels very busy lately! Now that we have gotten through the main part of the adoption paperwork (and the fact that I have pretty much given up on trying to complete all my homework and reading for my class (Perspectives on the World Christian movement) at church - it is too much!), I have been trying to catch up with friends. Friday night two of my closest friends came over and we spent some time praying together. I have many friends who are single and desiring to be married. In almost every area of my life - friends, work, church, and family - I know of people desiring marriage. I have had a strong desire to be praying for all of them lately so it was a blessing to be able to pray with my friends about this. On Sunday, I went to a bridal shower for another friend. It was wonderful to see friends that I don't usually get to see since we don't live near each other.

However, there were parts of the bridal shower that were hard for me. And I hate feeling like this. As it often does at these type of events, talk turns to how many children the couple "plans" to have. Someone said a beautiful prayer for the bride-to-be. In the prayer, she asked the Lord to make their marriage fruitful and produce children. There is nothing wrong with this at all, I always pray for friends who are getting married to not experience infertility. But I found myself wondering why the Lord hasn't allowed our marriage to be "fruitful." And why for most people they get to "plan" how many children they will have and when they will have them. At times like these, I have a tendency to fall back into old thought patterns, thinking that maybe it is because I am unworthy of God's blessing and maybe if I had been a better person we would experience His blessing of children. I know thoughts like these are wrong. The blessings we receive are because God is good, not because of anything we do. Sometimes it is hard not to let my thoughts get away from me wondering why we have to walk this difficult path. Today I happened to hear a song on A's blog (Lisa also posted about it) by Josh Wilson that really spoke to me. These lyrics in particular really jumped out at me:

Do you wonder why you have to
Feel the things that hurt you?
If there’s a God who loves you where is He now?

Maybe there are things you can’t see
And all those things are happening
To bring a better ending
Someday somehow you’ll see, you’ll see

Would you dare would you dare to believe
That you still have a reason to sing
Cause the pain that you’ve been feeling
It can’t compare to the joy that’s coming

So hold on you gotta wait for the light
Press on and just fight the good fight
Cause the pain that you’ve been feeling
It’s just the dark before the morning

The pain of now can't compare to the joy that is coming! I am holding on to this right now. Listen to "Before the morning" below.

Pulling out of Bethany

In my last post, I said I had called both Bethany and CHSFS. When I spoke with the person who answered the phone at Bethany and explained our situation to her, she thought it would be an independent adoption from Korea (there is no such thing). She went on to say that they would not be able to do our home study if Korea was one of the countries they worked with (she told me to check their website to see if it was one of the countries - it was). I said I would still like to speak with the social worker who deals with international adoption to verify the information she had given me. I didn't get a call back from her until the end of the week. Meanwhile, I had already gotten accurate information from CHSFS. I missed the call when Bethany called me back and since we were already in contact with CHSFS I didn't want to waste their time by calling them again. To be honest, this was just one more thing I found myself disappointed in with Bethany.

It led me to the question of why we went with them in the first place. As I wrote before, I did have a peace about Bethany and did sense God pointing us in that direction. Prior to making that choice, I had a conversation with a very good friend who pointed out to me that sometimes we just have to make a choice. We can be so afraid to take a step forward, afraid that somehow it is going to wrong and we will have irreparably messed things up. When we think this way, we miss the grace of God. "See to it that no ones misses the grace of God" Hebrews 12:15. She reminded me that His grace is sufficient and if I don't get things quite right He still works it for good. What I realized is that I had to stop being fearful and take a step forward. That was the peace I had about taking the step of filling out the application with Bethany. I also realized that God would continue to guide me if I continued to listen. So often I hear from God and then set my course and go. I don't continue to listen for the course correction that may need to be made along the way. This time He has given us not just a course correction, but a change in course. So was I wrong about Bethany? I don't believe so, at least not at that time. It was all part of God teaching me and preparing me to pursue international adoption from Korea. Before, I was far too overwhelmed and fearful of the adoption process. The formal application with Bethany served as a nice practice run. I wrote before that every time I thought of going in a different direction besides Bethany (usually a quicker one) I had no peace. The thing is, had we gone with another agency with a faster timeline, we would have been so far along in the process that I would not have been open to this situation. Because all we have lost is $100 and an afternoon filling out an application (which as I said will only help us this time around), we are not upset or concerned about this change in course at all. In fact, we are very excited, something that was missing before.

Our formal application to Bethany was submitted September 26th. The next step was an informal interview with our social worker. I knew she would be calling at some point to set up the interview. I hoped to have an answer as far as the Korea adoption situation before she called. We had our first meeting with CHSFS on Wednesday, Oct 28th and she still had not called. I planned to call her Monday to pull out, but she called me late Friday afternoon so I had to tell her then. I was wondering if I was going to feel scared about officially pulling out and the thing is I wasn't. I felt relief and excitement. I have already seen the Lord work in a mighty way in this situation. I am looking forward to how He will continue to show Himself as He fulfills His purposes.