Family vs. Family

What we expected vs. Reality

Today I am unable to focus on anything else other than how good our God is and how He makes everything beautiful in His time, how He knows what the future holds and prepares us for what He calls us to do. I am reflecting back on the past year of my life, which seems more like five years, to be honest.

A year ago, today, we received our referral from the agency we were with in Haiti-3 beautiful children who supposedly didn't have living parents and desperately needed a family. Overjoyed, we shortly took our only daughter on a bonding trip to meet them...and that's just what we did while we were there...BONDED to them...all 3. Here is a photo of our "family" during this trip. This was our picture of what our family looked like, and we had no reason to imagine it any differently.

Fast forward exactly one year, and this is actually our family right now. Our family looks nothing like we imagined it to be, which leads me to why I can't stop praising God for just how amazing He is. He orchestrates all things because He loves us so much. No detail is left out-He is the author of ALL.

We grieve the loss of the kids we called ours in Haiti, and we pray for them every day. We know they were brought into our lives for a reason and because of that we have joy in what the Lord has done. God knew what children He would bring to our family, which children we would have the honor to call our daughters, and He knows if there will be more some day too. When He allowed our Haiti referral into our inbox on April 13, 2013, and we said "YES," He knew the hurt and grief that would occur 3 months later as we realized it was a complete scam. He also knew that we had to go through this exact situation to prepare our hearts to say "YES. YES. YES!!!!!" to Selah and Sara.

We know without a doubt that God was refining us through this situation, even testing us, as we had told Him time and time again that we trusted Him with His plans for our adoption. When Haiti fell through and we were presented with the opportunity to adopt Selah and then Sara, it's as if God asked us "Do you trust me?" and "Do you really want to help ANY and ALL of my children?"

We are truly honored that God trusts us enough to parent any of His children; sometimes we truly wonder if He chose the wrong people! We just can't contain the goodness of our Savior, who redeems us over and over again. We seriously see His face in everything, even when situations are ugly or things seem grim. We encourage you to not lose hope in God because as long as there is God (and He isn't going anywhere), there is always HOPE.

P.S. compare our original referral from Haiti of 2 girls a boy to our family now
...we realize that God has fulfilled the 2 precious girls part. We are kind of wondering when He plans to show us a boy ;)