"The Reason for the Wait"

A friend sent me this devition this morning and I thought it would minister to families waiting for thier children!

Our grandson didn't have the words to say it, but he made hisdesires very clear as his food was being prepared, "I want my food, andI want it NOW!" It's a good thing his mother didn't give in. It wasn'tready yet! Believe me, it wouldn't have been good for him to get what hewanted when he wanted it. It would have been, in plain English,bleaaahhh! I can't begin to count the times I've been the same way with Godabout something I wanted or needed. "What's taking so long, God? I wantit, and I want it NOW!" Maybe there's something you've been asking andtrusting God for a while, and it still hasn't come. You want it now, butthere's a reason God isn't giving it to you now. It's not ready yet. Andit would disappoint you if He gave it to you now. There's a word that's one of the major keys to God's best, a wordthat is spelled out in our word for today from the Word of God. Psalm37, beginning with verse 5, tells us to: "Commit your way to the Lord;trust in Him and He will do this ... Be still before the Lord and waitpatiently for Him ... Wait for the Lord and keep His way." There's theword that often stands between you and God's best - wait. Part ofcommitting your way to the Lord, of trusting in Him, is to wait untilGod says it's ready; until God says you're ready. So many people areliving today in the heartache of their own impatience. They couldn'twait, so they grabbed what they could have now. And it's been much lessthan what God was getting ready for them. You've been waiting for God to come through. You want to be married.You're waiting for Him to answer your prayer about having a child orraising a child. You're waiting for that job, that heart change, thatbreakthrough, that answer, and it hasn't come yet. Don't panic. Don'tlet impatience cost you the perfect will of God. Premature babies aren'tas healthy as ones that are full-term. Premature solutions aren'thealthy either. Wait until it's full-term. Remember the principle ofGalatians 4:4, "In the fullness of time, God ..." God will bring youyour answer when it's ready. So stop whimpering, stop whining, stoptrying to grab it before it's ready. If you insist on having it now,you're not going to like it!

The Wait

Today I was playing around on some China adoption websites and came across a "referral calculator." This allows you to put in your LID and see how long it could possibly take to get a referral. I played around and put our LID as 10/1/07. The date it gave me was July 16, 20011!!!!! That is almost 4 years. This is however, the timeline for a "healthy" child and we are pursuing a Special Needs (SN) adoption so we'll see. AWAA tells me it's more like 18-24 months, so I'm not sure what makes for the difference, however even 18-24 months sounds a whole lot better than 4 years. Some websites say that the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) is close to 25,000 in numbers as far as families waiting on referrals and they are currently giving out about 600-700 per month. It's a lot to think about! I'm trying not to focus on the wait and the numbers and rather focusing on praying and believing God for the child he has for us. Also, we need to pray for all the families waiting for their children and especially the children, who suffer more for these waits than us American adults could even imagine.

" I wanted to be born in China"

Avery told me today that she didn;t want to be born from my tummy, she wanted to be born in China!!! Then she told me, " Mama, when we go get Ashlei we'll have 4 girls, how are you going to feed all those girls!?"

American World Adoption Packet

It looks like a Tiffany box doesn't it?!

Can this be real?

Today is April 18, 2007. We received the packet today from American World and it came with a video about the agency and Steven Curtis Chapman. He has adopted 3 children from China. We laughed and cried and cried some more! At the end, Jay said, "Fill it out, send it in TODAY!" We will be applying for the Special Needs portion of the program as well. I called a China coordinator today and asked a few ?s about the application, but I think everything is complete. We have a meeting with the girls doctor on May 9th to discuss some of the special needs aspects. Here we go.........