Merry Christmas 2013

December 21, 2013

Its strange to be back at this place, typing a blog post again.  It has been so long.  But I thought this might be the easiest way to share with everyone about how God is moving in our lives and family. 

About a year ago, we shared with our family how we felt the Lord was working in our hearts and leading us on a journey to adoption.  We didn’t know which direction the Lord would lead us, but we felt his nudging and knew we needed to be obedient and start learning what our options were for adoption. 

"God destined us for adoption as His children through Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of His will" Ephesians 1:5

 We prayed and read and went to meetings, the options were overwhelming.  It was so hard to narrow down a path we felt would work with our current family and was the Lords will for our lives.  We decided that foster care would possibly be the way we would go.  Daves sister, Debbie, has been a foster parent for years now and told us about "A" (10) and "J" (7) this past summer.

We prayed for awhile about 2 children vs one.  Could we handle it?  It wasn’t part of our plan.  But God often doesn’t work according to our plans.  In July we met the kids for the first time at the park.  I was a bottle of nerves.  Everyone played great together and we discovered a lot of fun connections like A and Raelyn having the same middle name, and A and Brenna sharing a birthday. 

Garret, Raelyn, Brenna and Jori have been very much a part of this journey with Dave and I.  They have great big hearts and good questions and concerns.  We are very proud of them for opening their hearts up to growing our family. 

After that initial meeting we have been spending most of our weekends with the kids.  We started out just picking them up for church on Sundays and then spending the day with them.  Then we started keeping them overnight on the weekends.  They even made a trip to Florida with us to go to one of our favorite spots in September. 

Since these children are already adoptable, DCS wanted to get them into a home that could be their permanent home.   In October we decided that God might be telling us that our home could be that home, that our family could be their family.  Since the children attend a different school from the Wid kids, we all thought it would be in the best interest of the children to have them move schools and transition into our home as foster children during the Christmas break. 

This morning, Dec 21) I picked the kids up at our normal drop off/ pick up spot.  But today is different.  I wont be dropping them back off there Sunday evening.  As I type this, I have so many emotions flooding my head and heart.  This is huge.  Six kids is a lot of kids.  Its chaos at moments and there is fighting and arguing, but there are also moments of great joy and healing.  Our God is a God of healing.  He makes beautiful things from dust.  He is teaching me so much, it is overwhelming some days.  I'm a slow learner though and I have hard days and question his plan and his power.  He keeps telling me, “I’ve got this, I’ve got YOU, TRUST ME”.

We ask that you will pray for us and with us as the Lord shapes our hearts to care for and love two more of HIS children.  That we can show them HIS love, the love that was so perfect that he sent his son to earth.  As we celebrate Christmas, we remember his great love for us.  His perfect love that drives out fears and makes things new. 

“When God leads or prompts us to do something small, we will be able to do it if we’re willing.  But sometimes God calls us to do something big that we feel we cant do in our own strength-either it is beyond our ability or beyond our natural human desire.  It is not something we can strategize and manipulate into being in and of ourselves.  It can only happen by God’s divine intervention.  The beauty of doing things beyond ourselves is that we will know it was by Gods doing and His alone.  And to Him we give all the Glory.” – Lysa Terkeurst

From our family to yours, Merry Christmas!