What Journey you may ask...
ADOPTING! We are making plans to make an orphan a Williams...I can't believe I just said that! We have been talking about this for so very long now, I can't believe we are moving forward with it. To say I am excited would be a drastic understatement, so we'll just leave it with "excited" for now until I look up a word that far surpasses the definition of that.
We have been thinking, praying, and researching adoption for several years now and just recently we have felt a green light to embark on this journey. God opened our hearts to adoption at the very beginning of our marriage when we met two little boys who were living with a dear foster family. The Lord used those two little boys to awaken our hearts to the idea of adoption. We fell in love with those two and have never forgotten them. As time has passed the Lord has made very clear the mandate through His Glorious Gospel for us to meet the needs of widows and orphans.
"Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world." James 1:27
So as the Lord continued to make clear to us what our part in "visiting orphans and widows in their distress..." looks like, we have landed where we are now, which is the starting line of the adoption process. We are not sure exactly what our story will look like twenty five years from now, but we trust in the Lord's grace and provision to write our family story the way He chooses. After all He is the Father to the Fatherless and Stephen and I would be orphans if it weren't for Him.
Before the Lord drew us to Himself, we were orphans in the orphanage of this world; dirty, filthy, stained with sin, broken from life and in need of being rescued. He sought after us, and paid a very high price for us, He payed for us with the blood of His very own son so that we could be forgiven and become a part of His family if we would only trust Him. He not only made us a part of His family, but sons and daughters...heirs!
"So also we, while we were children were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world. But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba! Father!
Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son' and if a son, then an heir through God."
The story of our own adoption is what compels us to move forward. We are no longer orphans, but sons of the Most High God, and with that Glorious Truth we want to demonstrate God's goodness through our lives and give an orphan a new hope, a new family, and an introduction to God's grace in our own lives.
Stay tuned...our story is just getting started!
