Silence and #1

Today was a great day! This morning was rainy and chilly outside, so I curled up on my couch, sipped my cup of delicious Ethiopian Gobena Coffee, and continued reading a book I've fallen in love with: Lost Women of the Bible. Just as the sky was gray outside, my spirit's been a little gray these past few weeks. God's just been silent. It's felt like nothing is happening with our adoption. Then, I read this about Hannah, an Old Testament heroin who struggled for years with the pain of an empty womb.

Hannah was as yet unaware of how much God was doing in the silence. God's silence is not an accurate way to measure what he is doing. It's easy to forget he often does his best work when, so far as we can tell, he doesn't seem to be doing anything at all. But looking back on those long agonizing stretches of God's silence, most of us will say those were the times in our relationship with God when he was doing the most. In Hannah's case, although there was no physical evidence of his activity - no thunderbolt, no voice from heaven, no positive pregnancy test - God was doing a mighty work in Hannah's heart.

The silence has been deafening, confusing, and unnerving on my worst days. Then, an email came today.
Our case manager emailed to let us know that we are "on deck" for a referral. THE NEXT REFERRAL WILL BE OURS! The stretching part of the email was asking if we were open to potentially receiving a referral for our older child being up to 4 years old. Hmmm. After a couple hours of processing with Brian and my dear friend, Erin, we said YES.

We simply feel like we need to remain open to whatever God might have for us. We're already approved for a child up to 4 years old. Maybe there's a reason? Maybe there's a little one over 3 years old who's supposed to be a Diaz? Maybe God just wants to test our trust in him more? Maybe he's not done stretching us? The truth is, our entire journey toward becoming parents has been about releasing expectations, desires, time lines, and letting go so God can do his thing.

God knows the desire of our hearts: 2 biological siblings - boy under 3; girl under 1. But if he matches us to kids that don't meet those qualifications, we will say YES. We will obey. We made that commitment years ago when we started this process. And we trust that God knows best for us and our 2 babies.

PLEASE continue to pray for us and our babies. We won't know when THE CALL will come, but we are hopeful it's soon. There's still so much that needs to be worked out from our perspective. But tonight we celebrate!