We Live By Faith

This was placed on my light switch by a special little one - I went to remove it, but read it first and decided it would stay. Amazing how God uses little hands to reinforce the message He has for you!

The Business Card

I spent most of the day on Monday and Tuesday trying to contact people through the Adoption website to learn how to navigate this process.  What does it look like?  How long does it take?  What do we need to do?  I felt like I was continually hitting brick walls.  I couldn't get people to return my phone calls.  The agencies I could speak with told me that they weren't interested in training us and we needed to call someone else.  I didn't know what to do, then Preacherman came home with hope.

Preacherman had taken Rockstar to her dance class at a local church.  While he was waiting for class to end, he was approached by the pastor's wife.  She was oblivious to our current pursuit of the foster process.  She handed him a business card and told him that this was the information of the Foster Care Recruiter from St-Francis Community Services.  She was trying to get in touch with all the pastors in the area.  Preacherman returned home and passed the card to me.  I immediately sent an email.  She replied before the end of the night with a promise of help.

Soft Hearts

We love our girls.  For reasons beyond the time I have to explain.  They are awesome, each in their own special way.  We must admit that we were just a little - ok, maybe a lot - concerned about their response to this idea, this calling God had given us this last weekend.  We recognized our children, especially our oldest, as one mountain that God would need to move in this process.

We chose to sit down with our oldest daughter, Crazy Horse, before the younger ones.  We met with her in her room, on her territory.  We began to explain to her how we love God and how we want to do the things that He wants us to do, then we dropped the bomb.  Then she dropped the tears.  Yep.  Tears.  We thought we were in for trouble now.  We asked her what she was thinking or feeling.  Her response, a heart softened to the voice of God, "I always thought that it would be kinda cool to adopt."  

We then called in Rockstar and Little Princess who were anxiously trying to claw their way into the room and shared the news with them.  They were so excited, all they could do was ask, "When can we go get them?"  It was most difficult to explain that this is a long process that we don't even know how it begins, but we knew that we wanted them to know what we were doing and most importantly why we were doing it.

He's Not Done Yet

Saturday morning we returned to the Festival of Marriage and enjoyed a great morning worship session with speakers Brandon and Jen Hatmaker.  We left the worship session and moved on to the next breakout session we had planned to attend.  After I returned to our seats in the session, Cale looked up at me and said gently, "I don't think we are supposed to be in this session."  We then left the session and returned to the room where general worship sessions were held and the current breakout session, offered only this one time during the weekend, by Jen and Brandon Hatmaker had begun.  The topic adoption.

We listened intently to the message that Brandon and Jen brought to us.  We heard the heartbreak they have experienced and the miraculous wonders they watched God do in the process of their international adoptions.  We heard from others in the session who had completed adoptions through state agencies.

Adoption has never been far from our mind.  There was a time in our early marriage before our blessing girls that we had paperwork to begin the foster parenting process.  I must admit when we left Kansas for Branson on Thursday, we had no idea that God would be calling us to enter the foster-to-adopt process. We still don't know what this process looks like.  There are obstacles present that we will trust God to remove and provide solutions to accomplish what He wants us to do.

Wherever He Leads

Cale and I have been attending the Festival of Marriage hosted by Lifeway for 10 years.  We looked forward to this year with great anticipation.  The schedule was filled with exciting, knowledgeable keynote speakers that we were excited to hear, including Steve and Debbie Wilson, Les and Leslie Parrot and Jen and Brandon Hatmaker.  We've heard Steve and Debbie several times and God never fails to bless us through them.  We've long desired to hear from Les and Leslie.  We were first introduced to them through their "Saving Your Marriage Before it Starts" material we purchased during our engagement.  We were super excited to hear Jen and Brandon Hatmaker.  I had previously heard Jen at the Wonderful Weekend for Women hosted by our Kansas Nebraska Convention and Cale had read through her book, Interrupted, and also Brandon's book, Barefoot Church.  We arrived Friday afternoon and gathered our schedules and sat down to plan out which of the six breakout sessions we would attend.

Friday afternoon kicked off with a session in Communication with Steve and Debbie and also a session in Love and Laughter with the Brocks.  We then went to dinner and enjoyed more food than we should have at the local College of the Ozarks, Dobyns Dining Room, recommended to us by a friend of mine.

Friday evening's keynotes were Les and Leslie Parrot.  For years Cale and I have felt that God has pulled at our hearts to share with other married couples the timeless treasures he has given us through our years of attending FOM. This year was no different.  Les and Leslie began by playing a commercial for their Marriage Mentoring Academy.  We know that our marriage is not perfect and that we have ups and downs just like all married couples, yet, we left Friday night with the nudge that it is time to reach out to the married couples we know in our community.

Friday night concluded with us laughing ourselves into stitches as we heard from comedian Ken Davis.  I'm so glad God created us to laugh, love and have fun together.