Update & Random ramblings

Well our social worker called today and the homestudy report is finished! YEA!! We had a hiccup (that's a nice word for what I really want to call it) with our mortgage in the past 2 weeks. It was a mistake our lender made when we refinanced a year and 1/2 ago. Without getting in to details (and risk raising my blood level), I will just say we are waiting on our mortgage lender to approve our new house payment amount. This should occur this week. Prayerfully!! We had already filled out all of our financial paperwork and are having to redo it. The silver lining - if there is one - is that the homestudy was not completed and official, otherwise, we would have had to pay to have it revised!!! Yikes!

So, back to my story, the GOOD NEWS is that our report is complete save our financial statement. Next step, we will then have 3 different sources approve the drafts - us, our homestudy agency, and our adoption agency. Then the final copy will be drawn up.
Y'ALL!!! That means that we will be REFERRAL READY VERY SOON!!! WhoopDeDoo!! Yahoo!!

So what does that mean, I can hear you all asking - because that is what people have been asking us in person :). As best I understand it, we will then be able to discuss the children at the orphanage in more detail with our adoption agency social worker. She could tell us that there are 15 people in front of us who want 2 kids under 5 and there are none that fit that description in the orphanage right now. OR she could tell us there is no one in front of us and there are 3 sets of siblings under the age of 5 there right now and which ones do we want?? I'm sure it's not that simple. I'm sure it's somewhere in between. I don't really know. We're taking one step at a time here, people.

Asa and Eli are continuing to process this in the sweetest ways. Eli says his prayers and thanks God for his sisters. Asa is beginning to notice other families that have mixed skin colors among them and saying "Hey, Look, that family is adopted too!" I love that he is saying the whole family is adopted. It's true, right?

I teach at a University a couple of hours away once a quarter. As I was driving there on Friday, I was listening to all my 'old school' worship music from about 10 years ago. I was immediately taken back to the years of our infertility...the many hours I spent pouring my heart out to God, crying at the altar for the Lord to hear me begging for children, laying my desires before him and asking them to take them away if he was to choose to not give me children. And yet, today, I am overwhelmed by His grace and goodness. The answers to my prayer. His perfect timing. His ability to know our dreams and desires. His plans. And now, we are on the brink of doubling the number of our children. I truly never dreamed of having 'tons' of children. But I've always dreamed of having a dark-skinned child. It has to be a God-given passion. As I cannot even begin to articulate where it came from. It gave me peace in this process. That no matter what twists and turns it may take, I feel certain that we are in the certain of His will. And in Him I will trust.

As I ramble my thoughts from this weekend, all is not lost that there may be those of you reading this who are experiencing that longing of desire yet fullfilled. May you be encouraged that God is a God who created you, knows you, and loves you. He is faithful. This I know to be true. Everything else is a mystery!! :)