The Process

Adoption is truly a roller coaster ride. We are told we have months to wait and miraculously (and I DON'T say that lightly) our I800 came back in a week on the U.S. end - that is amazing and that was with an additional supplement - we saw God's hand, and we were SO excited that we might be moving VERY quickly now. Then we get an email today saying now that our paperwork is FINALLY in China, we can still expect to wait MONTHS before we get our approval to travel. I am telling you - the whole thing truly feels like a roller coaster. And you NEVER want to let your hopes get up - there are just SO many things that can happen to slow you down.

So I really needed this email from a dear friend today. I asked her if I could quote part of it - it was just SO good and something I want to always remember.

I was just reading this Piper comment about prayer. He says that (and I'm wildly paraphrasing here) we don't pray in order to change God. We pray, that God might change the heart of the one who's praying. So... I know that God isn't sitting up there saying, "Well, I'm not sending this little peanut home until SOMEBODY prays just the right thing" or "...until 1,119 people have prayed on her behalf". Or whatever. He has His plan in place, and He allows us to come to him with our petitions -- to walk closer with Him, to be uplifted in our conversation with Him, and to grow closer to those whom we pray for/with. I think God's allowing me to pray for Jada has definitely given me a soft spot in my heart for her... permanently. Even though I don't know her! And when I see Him answer our prayers with responses like super-quick I800's, it brings Him glory -- which is precisely what we were made to do.

My dear friend has hit the nail on the head. AND believe me, she's a friend that KNOWS what this crazy wait is like. (We were covering them in prayer not so long ago.) So we continue to lift our prayers to the One that has the path already laid out before us.

Here is what I read today in my time in the Word:
Isaiah 55:8-9:

The Lord says, "My thoughts are not like your thoughts. Your ways are not like my ways. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts."