Trip 2, Day 8

When I'm sutdying my Bible this morning, I felt led to read Psalm 68. I'm diddty-boppin- along and come to verses 5-6:

"A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in His holy habitation. God sets the solitary in families."

I don't know how those who struggle with infertility feel--I can only imagine the pain, frustration, and void in their hearts. We, however, did not enter this adoption needing to fill a void in our lives (at least not me anyway.) We had two beautiful, healthy girls, and if that was all we'd ever have, we'd be satisfied and feel blessed--boy or not. But it was God who began knocking on the door of our hearts years ago--it was Him who put a desire to go "get" a little one without a father and give him a home--our home.

I realized that this adoption was so much bigger than simply a way for Doug and me to add to our family. I am truly humbled that God would use us to give one of His little ones a family. That he would turn my heart, which had never been moved towards adoption (oh, it was a great thing for others to do, but it wasn't for me) and fill me with a desire that was contrary to my flesh. To bring us to a foreign nation in search of a boy--thinking in the back of our minds we'd choose Russia because this boy--whomever he was--would look like us--and finding that our package was not wrapped as we had envisioned.

No one can tell me God doesn't have a sense of humor! For those of you who don't know, after Kennedi was born, Doug kept bugging me about when we were going to have another one. He told me he saw a picture of our family, and there was a little boy in it. I, who was in no way ever going to get pregnant again, said to him one day, "I hope that boy in your picture is Chinese because that's the only way it's going to happen." And as a testimony to the power of your words, our little boy has Asian features. I am in awe at how God has melted my feelings of apprenhension towards adoption years ago, and He has opened our hearts to a little boy who isn't going to look at all like my Polish side of the family! I look at my husband who has tears in his eyes when he talks about what beautiful skin our son has or how straight his knees are (he's thinking football I know!). God has given Doug a son, and He has given us the opportunity to experience just a small taste of what He must feel when He adopted us when it says, "Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ..." Eph 1: 4-5.

I don't have everything figured out; even since we've gotten here, I've wondered on several occasions if we have fallen off our rockers by doing all this, and the stress of the unknown of bringing this little "stranger" into our home scares the wildfire out of me some minutes of the day. I do know that God will use our story and our family to further His purpose, that our cup will runneth over with blessings because of our willingness to be obedient, and I know that I can do all things through Christ.