All In!

As we continue to wait and wait and wait for our certification process to be complete I wanted to share some things with you.

Waiting is hard. I think all of us have had to do it in some form or manner. I've had to do a lot of waiting in my life: waiting through infertility, waiting to see the sun through a Pittsburgh winter, waiting to get to move home to Texas. I've waited a lot and tend to be pretty good at it but for some reason this waiting was seeming really easy (not like cake-walk easy but only cry or get emotional once or twice a week easy)

But I think it is about to get harder.

Why?

Because I'm all in, every breathe I have I'm going to be praying for mountains to move. Every moment I am dedicated to praying my child through, praying the birth family through. I have drawn my circle and am standing here. I will not be shaken.

The Bible says that if we tell the mountains to move that they will move. Right here, right now, and with every word I can muster I'm telling mountains to move, in Jesus name. I'm praying for my child to not be away from me for one more day than he or she has to. I'm praying that their situation is only as hard as it has to be to bring them to me. I'm praying that God is surrounding my child with my love, my voice, my smell so that when my son or daughter is placed in my arms they are home.

Home is not a building, the same way that Church is not a building. Home and Church both are lived out through the people that occupy the buildings (or tents or teepees or wigwams or log cabins)

Cherokee lesson (I thought that this would be fitting for today's post): igatseliga (ih-gah-tse-lih-gah) ᎢᎦᏤᎵᎦ  this means "we belong to each other"

We belong to each other. I belong to my child and my child belongs to me: we belong together. Therefore I will travel where ever I need, move any obstacle in my way, scale what needs to be scaled all to wrap my child in my arms and say "I'm here. Gvgeyuhi (I love you). I will not leave you, baby Martin."

Waiting

I was trying to relate what I am feeling as we anxiously await the arrival of our daughter. She keeps tricking us! On Sunday I woke up "in labor" but it stopped and then the same thing on Monday. I guess she has her own schedule and wants to keep us on our toes.

The closest that I can come to describing this is for me to tell you about another day.

On October 15, 2005 I was getting ready for the homecoming dance at TAMS. I had been ready for a while, really it doesn't take that long to do your hair and put on make-up and I had started way too early. For the last half hour before my date came I sat in my dorm room with butterflies in my stomach. Everything was ready to go, the room was clean, my purse was packed with the essentials and every hair was in place. All I could do was wait and wait. After a little bit I heard some noise coming down the hall so I looked out. Mackenzie was walking Mitchell to my room. At this point my heart was racing.

I know that sounds kind of silly. I had gone to plenty of dances and I had known Mitch for a while, as a friend. We had volunteered together and hung out a little. Little did I know, that that dance and that date would end up starting a whole new chapter in my life; the chapter in which I fell in love with my husband. Needless to say, that chapter started many others. Including the one that is about to open: Parenthood.

I sit around the house excitedly waiting for Adelaide to arrive. Her bags are packed and all of her clothes are pre-washed and folded. Her quilt is made. Her dresses are hanging in her closet. Her car seat is installed and her bed is set up. The house is clean and meals for after her arrival are in the freezer with directions written on them (in case Mitch has to prepare them) I know that this moment is big. I know that this moment is precious. I know that this moment will pass all too quickly.

Hoping Place

I wrote a little while back, after I got back from Uganda, about the direction God is directing my life. I wrote about how I now understand that my purpose in life is to make my house a home that is open to anyone that needs a home. I have these big dreams about creating a nursery for when we are blessed with children to love and about designing a super cozy guest room for anyone needing a place of respite. I can see Mitch, Theo and I playing with our children at the park. I see all of these things. I imagine me cooking up a big meal for people who need some food. I hear a tea pot whistle on the stove as I set out some big tea cups to have heart felt conversations on the couch.

It's kind of strange. I see the finish line and I see where I am now. I am doing my best to take steps forward yet there are somethings that only God can do. It is kind of like the "waiting place" from Dr. Seuss' "O The Places You Will Go", kind of. But I am not just waiting on a train to come... or the wind to blow... I am more so in a "hoping place". I have faith that some day soon. I will put to full use all that I have been prepared to do. The bible says "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" Hebrews 11:1.

That is where I am. To the rest of the world that is rushing by at a million miles an hour it may seem like I am standing still and sometimes that makes me feel a little foolish or dumb but it really shouldn't. Does a butterfly feel foolish when it is in a cocoon? Does a seed feel dumb as it slowly grows even before it breaks the soil? No... they somehow understand that this time of hoping, this time of faith, is molding them to be stronger and to bear much fruit. I am not the first to be in this waiting place where faith is required, no, where faith is all there is.

Hebrews 11 tells of many people who only had faith and hope to spur them forward. I want to highlight some of them here. Noah had great faith when he, bearing the scorn and shame of those around him, built a giant boat on his dry land and proceeded to fill it with animals even though there was no sign of rain. I kind of feel like that. I am preparing my home for that which there is no sign of. Abraham and Sarah had great faith when they trusted that God would give them a child even though they were very old and yes they strayed from their faith and doubted and Abraham had a son with his handmade but they soon realized their error and put their faith back into God and He blessed them with Isaac. It says of Sarah that "she judged him faithful who had promised". I love that. She weighed what she had been told against what she knew and what she had seen in her life and around her and knew that God would be true. I feel like that sometimes, like nothing around me should give me any hope towards my dream but I know God and what he has done for me and how he has poured his love out onto me beyond measure and I know that he will sustain me. Hebrews also speaks about Jacob who praised God even with his dying breath. And of Moses' parents. I cannot imagine what I would do if God told me to go set my child into the Allegheny River, let alone the Nile (it has crocodiles), in a basket. I would think I had lost my mind. Surely God wouldn't ask me or call me to do something so bizarre. Yet that is what they did. They laid their new son into the Nile River in a basket and had faith that God would provide and he did. The baby was pulled out of the river by the Pharaoh's daughter. Mind blowing!

All this is mostly written out for me to process this strange place that I am in. I suppose that I have been in this "hoping place" since returning from Uganda. While in Africa I had a specific purpose and I knew what I had to do I was constantly surrounded by it. Here I am waiting. Here I am building a boat in the dry season. Here I am trusting he who has promised. Here I am putting all my love and joy into a basket and praying for the best (figuratively of course).

Maybe you are in this place too... just like me. I want to encourage you. God has done amazing things in my life. He has pulled me from dark places. He has blessed me beyond belief. And He has used me in amazing ways to bring glory to His name. I have fed and held the orphans of Africa. I have clothed those without clothes. God has used me to love and to teach. Have faith and God will use you in ways that at the end of the day leave you exhausted, humbled, in awe and completely excited for what comes next.

"In hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before the world began"

Titus 1:2

"I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith;"

2 Timothy 4:7

"Faithful is he that calls you, who also will do it"

1 Thessalonians 5:24

"And let us not be weary in well doing; for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not."

Galatians 6:9

"In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by an action, is dead."

James 2:17

"For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not have, we wait for it patiently"

Romans 8:24-25

"You are my refuge and my shield. I put my hope in your word."

Psalm 119:114

"Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer"

Roman 12:12