a little and a lot

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

GodSpeed

Four weeks ago, we officially decided to pursue Brooklyn's adoption.

Every yes that led us to that decision kept leading us to more and more yeses.  And then picture a dam crumbling and flooding us with the blessing and yeses and provision and presence of God after that big yes.

In four weeks, we have completed the home study and dossier.  (For frame of reference, that took four MONTHS with Rhet, and I had thought we were being speedy!)

There have been so, SO many answered prayers and God-instances in this four-week journey.  The Lord has truly THROWN open the doors to get us to our girl.

And then I was given a humbling reminder...

This past weekend, we had a series of events that had the appearance of everything unraveling.  We'd had some rooms painted last week and the painter took a day longer than agreed.  All the furniture was in the middle of the floor on the morning of our home visit.  The TV wall mount wouldn't work as planned.  One of our vehicles surprised us by refusing to show any signs of life.  My last document for our dossier had been promised by Friday and had yet to show up.

We worked like crazy people getting the furniture back in place.  Friends came to help with the TV.  At least we still had one working vehicle.  And our needed document appeared in the mailbox. Home visit went smoothly.

But the TiVo.  It was not working.  I mean, eh, it wasn't a big deal, right?

But it just bugged me.  Here I am moving heaven and earth to get all of this paperwork finished and we can't get the TiVo working.  So I did what anyone used to being on a mission would do: I put all of my adoption paperwork fervor into this one small task of getting the TiVo up and running.

But wait, it turned out the hard drive had crashed.  We can work with that--I found out how to replace the unit inexpensively and ran right out and purchased a new unit.  But wait, TiVo didn't want to honor our past subscription price.  Well, I worked something out with the customer service reps.  But wait, when we pulled the new unit out of the box, we realized we didn't have a way to hook it up.  (Our HDMI port is "burnt out" on our TV.)  Ok, I'll find a way to convert it to the ports we can use.  But wait, the promised conversion box was not in stock at the store.  But wait, I'll try another store.  No luck there either.  But wait, here's a different port that may work--let's try it.  But wait, it needs an extra cord.  That can be fixed by yet another store run.  But wait, they don't carry that specific cord.  I reached the end of the night with nothing fixed.

And as I laid my head on the pillow, I sensed the Lord reminding me:
Hey Jesse?  I am the one moving heaven and earth to get all of this paperwork finished.  If you want to keep working out of your OWN efforts, they will all end up like this TiVo.

BOOM.  He was so right.

And lo and behold, we hit a snag with the final home study completion this week.  Something that threatened a long delay.  And I wrung my hands and stressed and blamed last night.  And God is already fixing it.  (You can pray about that, by the way!)

Getting to Brooklyn is not by our OWN efforts and in our OWN speed.  It is all Him, my friends.

Please pray for our immigration clearance and dossier authorization, which are the next steps after this home study gets signed off.

My mom sent me this quote last night, and you can pray this over us as well:
"When I feel anxiety begin to rise up in me, it helps to hold an empty bowl--a reminder that my soul is made to receive from God rather than achieve for God."  (Emily Freeman)

Oh, and our dead vehicle was raised to life yesterday.  Costly repairs?  Naaaahhhh.  Just a dud battery that had been installed last month.  Under warranty, of course.  Grace upon grace upon grace...

Via Brim Papery (and hanging on our freshly painted wall!)

1 comments:

Erin Q Nasmyth said...

Love y'all. Love the example you set as you work to remain in God's plan and rest in his provision. Thanks for sharing your journey in this way!


Adopting Rhet: Click on the timeline above to read more