Silent Prayer Answered

Just before Christmas I was laid off. Why I was laid off is a long story for another day. I started making phone calls and interviewing the very next day and on the December 16th, two weeks after losing my job, I was offered a new position with an amazing company.

That certainly was a prayer answered but it would not be the only prayer to be answered this Christmas season.

We received notice in early December from USCIS that we were to appear for our biometrics (fancy word for more fingerprinting). Not having a job made pursuing an adoption unrealistic and my heart was heavy. However, we already paid for the I600a and not showing up for the appointment would have been a waste of the money. I prayed daily leading up to the appointment telling God that I believed in His will and that I would serve His children in any way I was called even if that meant that we wouldn't be bringing home a child to our family.

December 21st arrived and we went early in the morning for our appointment. Todd went first and with his fingerprinting complete, he left to run errands with the kids. I went next and finished my fingerprints a few minutes later.

As I left the office and walked to my truck I said the simple prayer I have been saying over and over for months, "God this is all in your hands and I trust in your plan. I know it was you calling us to care for orphans and I will do whatever it is that you ask of me....even if it means we're not adopting....I will patiently wait for your plans to be revealed."

I got in my truck, started my car and turned my phone's ringer back on. My status line was showing I had just received my daily verse from the app Daily Bible. I tapped on the icon and the day's verse read.

And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

                                               Matthew 8:15

I can't remember a time that I received a more clear cut, timely and direct answer to a prayer before that morning. I believed before that we were answering a call from God but now I hold on to that answered prayer knowing that in His time we will be called upon to say yes to a child who deserves to grow up in a family.

When God Says Wait......

What do you do when God tells you to wait? Do you tell Him you don't have time to wait? Do you tell Him waiting is not convenient right now? Do you try to convince Him that your plan to hurry up is better than His?

Maybe you do all these things but ultimately you still must wait, we all must wait. But does God mean for us to be idle while waiting? I doubt that very much.

My job situation is very tenuous at the moment. Find me someone in the US who thinks they have job security.  I need to figure out my job situation or we will not be able to pursue this adoption at this time. Fortunately, I am frantically looking to fix this situation but while I do that I'm asking myself what God wants of me right now. I can't seek new job opportunities all day and night. So what does He want me to do or to discover during the time I'm not out solving employment issues?

I KNOW that he did not put the conviction of adoption into my heart so that when an obstacle came along impeding it I would be able to justify abandoning His idea. I use all capitals on the word know because I KNOW in every cell of my being that God wants me to go to Uganda. I KNOW that God has planned for a specific child for our family who is waiting. I know this like I know I am mother. I can't be convinced I'm not a mother; I am a mother. I know this like I know my eyes are green. They are green. I know we're going to Uganda to adopt. We are adopting because God told me so.

But until then? Get your house in order, girl! Here's a partial list of my to-do's. Some of them trivial, yes, some of them just huge looming to-do's that I hate thinking about.

• Strip and seal the stone in the shower. DONE
• Create family budget and ways to save. DONE
• Sell furniture from business. Working on it!
• Input 2011 bank statements into Quick Books. Ugh!
• Write (yep, I'm writing a book!)
• Get the kids teeth sealed and get Kate's glasses ordered...believe me, this has been on the list for a while
• Clean out the kids bedrooms. Ick!
• Write thank you cards to those who have supported our adoption.
• Support others who are a step ahead of me in their adoption process.

I'd love to hear what other mothers are doing during their wait. Tell me what things you put on your list or checked off a long overdue list.

You've Got Mail

It's hard to describe the joy of a new message in the inbox of a waiting adoptive mother. I created an email account just for our adoption related emails and have it set up to forward to my phone. I check it a million trillion times a day.

I check it when I'm with clients. I'm not Kardashian obnoxious about. Luckily I do some of my work behind a laptop so I can take a quick peep down at my phone to see if any new emails have come in. I check it in the car. Gasp! Who could resist? I check it first thing in the morning. I refresh all day long. Then I check real quick before I go to bed.

Once in a glorious blue moon I actually get an email. And that is enough to make my day. Or night. I don't even have to open the email. Just seeing the (1) next to the inbox is enough. It's too new an email address to receive spam yet so every (1) means something related to our adoption.

So today at 3:30 am when I couldn't sleep, I gave up trying and came in here to work and then got sidetracked looking in my inbox. (Yes, I am the person they are writing about in articles detailing the do's and don'ts of being productive.) I decided to try emailing the attorney we would like to work with. I've emailed her a few times in the past with no luck. She comes highly recommended and is very busy. So I've been waiting.

I sent her a quick email and then went to Facebook. Ha. Yep, right next to my home computer is my work laptop. The laptop is screaming at me to finish the work I need to do before going into work this morning. But Facebook is so much more fun.

After FBing for a while...did you know there aren't that many people on FB at 3:00 am? Anyway, after FBing but before going to 'work' I decided to check my email real quick. Pay dirt. Ten minutes after I sent the email off to the attorney, we struck gold and her assistant sent a response back.

I now have a better To Do list than the one that says "Finish work project by the time the work day starts." I printed her To Do list for a little later I am now going to finish my work project content that something very exciting happened already today.

Right after I finish blogging about it...........

Update: It's 6:49 am and I have 11 minutes until I wake our son up and we start getting ready for the day. I FINISHED my work, packed up my computer and it's sitting by the front door ready to go. I'm ready for the day and I won't miss those 4 hours of sleep.....much!

Why Should You 'Follow'?

Why should my friends, family and total strangers I don't know 'follow' our blog, sign up to 'follow by email' or bother commenting on our my posts? We'll in the words of my husband I'm an Attagirl girl.

Yep, I'm not too proud to admit it. I like Attagirls. I thrive on positive reinforcement and feel dejected and unworthy if I don't get my daily quota. My husband has learned over the years that a well timed, "Good job, babe" or "You got that done? You're awesome" will encourage more good behaviour plus it has an added bonus of an instant mood boost. Mine; not his. He has also learned that NO Attagirls will lead to a dark and unsightly place with no GPS.

This may be too much information into my psyche but, really, followers are great. What was the point in creating the blog to begin with? We created it to share our adoption experience, to chronical the journey, to educate others on the orphan crisis and, of course, to help us in part to fund the adoption costs. It's logical then, that the more people joining, engaging, asking questions, sharing ideas, and talking about our adoption, the more opportunity we'll have to accomplish our original goals.

Our followers are people who hopefully follow the blog on some type of regularity. But to guarentee you don't miss anything sign up to receive email alerts so when I post something new and wildly interesting you won't have to use your power of ESP to know I did it; somehow, you'll be sent the link to my latest post.

Comments could be another line of 'Attagirls' or it could be a useful tool for communicating like or differing points of view. You choose. I'll love 'em either way.

So that's my shameless plug. Thank you to the VERY lucky Original Twelve as I've taken to calling you. Well, one follower is me and the other is my husband so maybe I should change that to the Original Ten. Anyway, thank you to those who jumped on board while I'm still trying to figure it all out.

I'm challenging our readers to do all three today

1. Add your name to the Follow Our Blog section
2. Sign up to receive updates by adding your email to Follow By Email
3. Comment on this post