Psalm 36:5-11 “Your lovingkindness, O LORD, extends to the
heavens, Your faithfulness reaches to the skies. Your righteousness is like the
mountains of God; Your judgments are like a great deep. O LORD, You preserve
man and beast. How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God! And the children of
men take refuge in the shadow of Your wings. They drink their fill of the
abundance of Your house; And You give them to drink of the river of Your
delights. For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light. O
continue Your lovingkindness to those who know You, And Your righteousness to
the upright in heart. Let not the foot of pride come upon me, and let not the
hand of the wicked drive me away.”
Praise God, we have found a house we will soon call our
home. After weeks of praying, “Show us where to go”, God has answered. It is
not what we would have chosen on our own, but it is clearly where God wants us
to hang our hats for a while.
This process has reminded us so much of when we adopted
Victor 8 ½ years ago. Because of the Ukrainian regulations for adopting (no
pre-selection/referral process), we knew from the start that we had to trust
God to lead us to the child He had chosen for us. Before traveling to the
country to find Victor, we asked God to lead us to him rather than us having to
choose. Many of you know that He did just that. Out of the hundreds of
thousands of Ukrainian orphans needing a family that 17th day of
October 2004, Victor Vitaleyvich Sova was the only one available for us to
consider. After what seemed more like a process of elimination rather than
choosing a child to adopt, we waited three days before we could meet him. Of
course we anticipated a magical, “love at first sight” kind of moment when
laying eyes on him for the first time. Tim and I will never forget what happened
(neither will Victor who has heard this story hundreds of times since then).
Rather than any writing on the wall or a supernatural vision come true, we saw
an awkward little boy who, at 2 ½ years old, stumbled across the room to us in
a confused sort of daze. It matched our own confusion as we watched him
struggle but smile when rolling a ball back and forth to us. All the while the
caretakers were repeating over and over in broken English how loving and sweet
he was. Added to the stress of the moment was the pressure from our facilitator
who was saying, “If you say yes and we start the process right now, we will
save a few days because the courts close in 30 minutes.” God knew we needed a little heat. He knew if
we had more time to consider, we may have said no and missed out on a life full
of blessings that would come from adopting Victor. Oh praise God He knows what
we are capable of. Through this crucial selection period, I kept hearing my
grandmother’s favorite verse, “Proverbs 3: 5-6- Trust in the LORD with all your
heart. LEAN NOT ON YOUR OWN UNDERSTANDING. In all your ways acknowledge Him and
He will make your paths straight.” In our understanding, it didn’t make sense.
Victor was obviously delayed. He didn’t look like the child we pictured when
beginning our adoption journey. We couldn’t see what the future would hold for
him, or for us with him. We remembered however, that our prayer was that God
would lead us straight to our child and here was one right in front of us who
desperately needed a family. Oh thank goodness we said yes! Anyone who knows
our precious little V will agree how much richer our lives are because of him.
If it weren’t for Victor, we wouldn’t have adopted Chernet, Mulu, Ruby, Pavlina
or Vanya. Our hearts wouldn’t have been opened to orphans. And we certainly
wouldn’t be renting this old farm house.
This house is not one we would have ever considered on our
own. As with our adoption of Victor, however, God knew we needed to feel a
little heat in order to say yes. We looked at this very house a few weeks ago
but it just seemed too broken and dirty for us to live there (I wrote about it in
a previous blog post- the rental house with LOTS of cow patties). With just over three weeks before closing on
our current home, and with no other options (God turned the heat up pretty
high), we decided to reconsider. We “threw out a fleece” and asked God to make
it work if this were the place for us to go. We emailed the owner asking if we
could negotiate on the rent (offering an outrageously low amount of rent for a
house that size). It was an amount we knew God would have to work out for us
because we couldn’t even find an apartment for that rate. We waited a few days wondering
if he were laughing or offended and choosing not to respond to such a ridiculous
request. But then, one week later, the owner responded and said YES, we could
have it for that price!!! We could hardly believe it! What we dismissed just a
few weeks ago, we were now excited about renting, mainly because we knew it had
to be of God. It needs a LOT of TLC, but
after weeks of seeking and praying, it is the only place we have found
available that will house all ten of us for a price that will allow us to
purchase a piece of property where we can build another place where we feel God
will use us to better serve Him. It’s not a place that would show up on a
search where we enter our criteria, but we are confident that the blessings He
has in store for us there will be even better than anything we could imagine.
Just after we signed the lease yesterday, claiming the house
as our dwelling place for this next year, our dear friend, Ms. Bev, stopped by
to help us do a spiritual cleansing of the house. It was one of the most
amazing things we’ve ever done as a family. By the time we were finished
praying through each room, this dirty and broken old house felt like a beautiful
place of peace where we now know the Holy Spirit will dwell and bless us, protect
us, and use us to point to God. As usual, we can’t see exactly what lies ahead
but we have been given enough confirmation to keep putting one step in front of
the other as we move forward in this direction. My aunt, Carolyn Sue, gave me a
book recently that articulates so clearly what we feel God has been teaching us
lately. It’s called Dangerous Surrender by Kay Warren. In it she says;
“When we sense God leading us on a
new journey, we want all of the information up front. We want God to fill out
the travel forms in triplicate, give us the detailed road map before we start
the journey, and guarantee our safe arrival at the destination. We want the
rewards of living lives of faith without actually having to demonstrate faith.
For you to become a seriously disturbed, surrendered person of faith, you will
have to be willing to say yes in advance – to give God your answer before you’ve
heard the question.”
Many of you who know how Tim and I like to plan for things
and can understand how hard it has been for us to wait and trust that God has
been quietly working on where we were to move. Although a little tired, (we’ve had a few
sleepless nights lately J),
we are THRILLED God has finally revealed to us where He wants us to go, and we
look forward to settling in there soon.
For those of you who have asked to help. We would LOVE it!
Our plans right now are to go back this Tuesday (3/26), Thursday(3/28) and
Friday(Good Friday- 3/29) to clean. Then our official moving truck date will be
Wednesday, April 10th. Thank you all for your prayers and your
constant words of encouragement/support while we move into this next stage of
our journey. We love you all!!!
p.s. I have to show you this picture of a precious note Vanessa wrote on the bottom of our list of things to do/get for the house. She and all of the kids are thrilled to be moving into this old farmhouse!
