Before I Blow Out The Candles...

August is arguably my favorite month of the year. It's culmination of summer. It's our anniversary (9 years on the 5th!!). And it's my birthday (31 years young on the 9th). I love this month. All of it. After 9+ months on the wait list, maybe it'll be the month that holds our referral, too!

Which leads me to a prayer request...if I'm doing my math correctly and time lines proceed as predicted (nearly a laughable sentence to write), these next couple weeks are the 11th hour for us. If we'd get our referral in the next 2 weeks, we'd probably have our first Ethiopian court date at the end of October. Then, we'd travel again for our Embassy date 6-8 weeks later to bring them home. Putting all those time frames together, we'd barely make it to bring them home by the end of 2010. If you've been following our journey for more than a few posts, you know this would be a huge deal - emotionally and spiritually - for us. The other factor, is financial. The U.S. government gives a great adoption tax credit for the year you complete your adoption. But if we don't complete our adoption in 2010, we'll have to wait an additional year for a substantial and very helpful tax refund for our expenses. This would be huge and hard to wait for with the expenses involved in adoption and (oh yeah!) parenting!

I've been spending a lot of time meditating these days in Psalm 40. I'm continuing to practice waiting patiently (verse 1), but verse 13 hit me today as a call for help to my God...

Please, Lord, rescue me!
Come quickly, Lord, and help me.

A few other psalms have resonated deeply:

"You are my refuge and my shield; I have put my hope in your word." Psalm 119:114
"Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him." Psalm 62:5

Yet at the end of August, my hope is in God. I wait for him, not for a referral. Still, God invites us to make our requests known to him because he cares. As Psalm 40 says, he turns his ear to hear our cry.

Prayer Request ::
We could bring home our babies
by the end of 2010.

4 Profound Words

I had dinner a few nights ago with my friend from London, Annie [right], and she so graciously asked me question after question about our adoption. I was catching her up on the past few months of our adoption. While I was more recounting the facts, Annie blew my mind...

Annie is a vicar in the Church of England, starting missional communities all over London. So I shouldn't have been surprised when she started preachin' it!
CHOSEN. With her beautiful British accent, she started talking about the beauty of being chosen into a family. The power of looking at a face and saying, "YES! We choose you! Out of every little one in the world, we choose you to be our son/daughter." I started crying when I thought of the years to come as our little ones grow up and I can say to them over and over again, "Your daddy and I chose you. We wanted you. And we went to the ends of the earth to bring you into our family. We wanted you so bad we would've done anything. We would've paid more money. We would've traveled one more time. We would've waited another year. We chose you!"The amazing thing is that God does that with us, too. He chose us and has gone to the ends of the earth to bring us into his family.
DEPOSIT. I also shared about the pros and cons of making 2 trip to Ethiopia. Mainly the "Big 3 Cons" of traveling twice: time, money, bonding then leaving. Then Annie said, "But it's like you go and make a deposit in your kids. You get to go, bond, see their personalities, kiss their cheeks, hold them close, give them tokens of their new home and THEN say to them: 'This is a deposit of my love for you. And I AM COMING BACK!' Just as Jesus came to assure us of his love for us and left us the Holy Spirit as a deposit, so you can do for your Ethiopian babies!" When we go on this first trip, we get to make a deposit with our kids and promise them that we will come back from them. How many correlations can there be between adoption and God's heart for his kids?!?!? Unreal!
STAY. STRETCHED. I also pretty honestly shared with her that for the past few months I haven't felt like there's any more I can stretch. I've felt like a rubber band that's lost my ability to stretch any further and has lost some elasticity while waiting. Annie held her hands as if she was stretching a rubber band mid-air and said, "Sometimes I think God stretches us to the point where we can stretch any longer. But when we must continue waiting, he gently just says to us: 'Stay. I'm not asking you to stretch any more. I know you're about to break, but I'm asking you to stay right here. Stay in this position. Stay in this posture. I know you can't handle anything more. But rest in me right here and stay.'" Tears again. That's totally what God's been saying to me, but I didn't get it until Annie eloquently preached it.

CHOSEN. DEPOSIT. STAY. STRETCHED. Profound verbs from a profound woman to increase a profound journey.

Beauty from Ashes

Just when I don't know how many more lessons I can learn from this infertility and adoption journey, God drops another one on me! Dave Gibbons [Newsong's lead pastor - my boss and friend] shared today that our response to pain typically goes through a few phases. First, there's some denial or ignoring that the pain isn't that real or that bad. Next, we realize that avoidance doesn't make it go away, so we acknowledge the pain. Then, we learn to accept the pain in our life for everything it is. But the final phase that many of us never get to is receiving that pain as a gift from God.

Pain is a gift, though it requires a change of perspective to see it as such. It points us back to a God who loves us and promises to heal us when we are willing and open. Pain can be best teacher because it's a God's megaphone to our deaf ears [C.S. Lewis]. And pain can become beautiful because is refining, sharpening, and intensifying God's beauty in us.

Paul, the biblical author who knew a life of pain, penned in 2 Corinthians 12:9 about who God is near to us in the midst of our pain: "My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness. So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me." His grace is filling and fulfilling. His beauty is made perfect in our ugly, broken, "things-we-wish-we-could-change" pain and weakness.God is beauty. The psalmist poetically articulates, "For God is sheer beauty, all-generous in love, loyal always and ever." [Psalm 100:5]

If you are in some pain today, I pray that because of God's beauty you will find strength for today and hope for tomorrow. I pray that beauty will rise from our ashes.

**Picture above is of Brian's tattoo of a phoenix rising from ashes.
The image for him produces the true freedom we all long for.
Romans 8:18-21 is the Scripture reference he later tattooed on his wrist
to further explain this beauty and freedom from ashes.