Homestudy Interview No.2 CHECK!

We completed our final homestudy interview yesterday which means all we are waiting for now is for our social worker to write up our homestudy and for it to be approved!  I have already begun working on our profile and have some sweet friends that are going to assist me with that.  I absolutely can not believe how quickly this is all unfolding before my very eyes!

I have been watching our friends this week as they have anticipated two situations with birthmothers and are still waiting on one to make a decision.  My anxiousness and anticipation for them is almost more than I can handle, I can only imagine the roller coaster this will be when it pertains to us directly!

We are so excited and our hearts are longing more and more for our little one and as I wait, I am praying for the birthmother and father, for the decisions they'll face, for their salvation, for the health of our child and for the situation in its entirety.  We are leaning harder and harder into the Lord for wisdom, discernment and guidance.  Lord, help us to depend on you!

We are waiting for you dear one with love and excitement!

A Yard Sale to Remember!

Words can not express my heart's emotions as I write this blog.  My view of the Holy, Awesome, Incredible, Sovereign God that I serve has been broadened as far as the eye can see.  God thankfully does not live in the box I often put Him in, He rips to shreds the tapestry I have woven of Him, and in such a precious, sweet, gracious way demonstrates His love for me and my family.

We started this idea of a Yard Sale fundraiser after we read many, many, many blogs of adoptive families and ways that they raised support; so we absent mindedly thought, "how hard could that be?"  And so began the pursuit of getting this thing up and running.  Little did we know what awaited us.  As I announced it on Facebook (fundraising without social media seems impossible these days!)  and immediately friends began contacting me with things to donate to our sale.  Over the next several weeks, stuff just kept on rolling in and rolling in and rolling in.  My garage began to burst at the seams and the overwhelming task of pricing things began.  At first it was super fun, but I'm not going to lie, it began to become daunting as the stacks of boxes grew higher and higher.

I learned alot about myself through this endeavor, and the things I learned were not things that I am proud of; the reality of my need to control things surfaced and began staring me in the face with an ugly glare.  My stress level started to rise and my view of God's capabilities to meet our needs and pull this thing together was shamefully very small.  I learned much about my prayer life as I went to the Lord asking him to bless our efforts, bless and multiply this stuff, supply help, and fund this task; however I asked of Him on a continuous basis often doubting that He would do it the way I hoped for.  Thankfully, His faithfulness does not depend on my faith.

As the week of the sale arrived, the Lord graciously provided me with two wonderful ladies that knew exactly what to do, and they managed to work the mountain I had created in my head down to a molehill.  They helped me finished tagging and pricing, get a plan together, and then come Thursday, they helped me execute.  These two women were indeed helpers sent by GOD!!!

We asked a few people around the church to help us get everything loaded and transported to the site of the sale (which the site itself was a blessing as well, I'll get to that later) and unloaded and set up.  Come Thursday morning, we had between 13-15 people there to help!!!  Talk about thankful; we were!    So we got everything loaded onto trucks and trailers and taken to the site to be unloaded and set up.  These people worked their hearts out; they sweat, swatted flies, lifted, unpacked, etc until we split at 12:30 to get ready for a funeral.

A sweet precious member of our church family at LOGOS Baptist Church went home to be with the Lord at the beginning of the week.  It gave much reflection to me as we paused what we were doing to recognize the Godly legacy this sweet lady left behind; and it made me all the more thankful to be a part of a body of believers who set aside their days/weekends to mourn with the family who lost a dear member of their family and picked right back up to help us with this Yard Sale.  Talk about bearing one another's burdens!!!

We returned after the funeral was over to continue setting up and to have a presale.  I went home that night overwhelmed with relief that it was time to begin!  I had decided Wednesday night before I went to bed, that I was not going to look at the forecast for the next three days and trust God to take care of the weather for us.  It rained all week leading up to the sale and I was a bit nervous about what to expect for the next couple of days...GOD IS GOOD!  Thursday, not a cloud in the sky, Friday clouds that provided cool breezes and no gnats, and Saturday beautiful skies and breezes with no gnats.  God was in every single detail!

To say that this sale was a success would be a tremendous understatement.  Successes are things that can be achieved by human beings...There are no words in the human vocabulary that describe just how wonderfully amazing this sale was!  Stephen and I prayed for a specific amount from this sale and let's just say God blew us out of the water.  He more than doubled the amount we prayed for and is currently still adding to it.

We prayed for $2,000 and right now we are sitting just shy of $5,000!!! Yes, you read that right, $5,000!!!  God is Good! He is so so good.  He is GOOOOOD!  What else is there to say but that?  He was in every single detail and I was reminded that just as He multiplied the fish and loaves for the 5,000.  He mulitplied the "stuff" for $5,000 :).

I wish I could capture every single detail on this blog to portray to you exactly how everything happened, but there is just NO way.  God blew our minds with the overwhelming support of our church body, family and friends that showed up to help, buy, and encourage; He blessed our hearts with people who overwhelmingly donated and sacrificed in order to make this sale a possibility and He showed us He is JEHOVAH-JIREH- our provider!  He exceeded any and all expectations we had for this sale and I want to tell of His wondrous works!

As if all He did wasn't enough, He blessed my hearts ten times over by this final event.  A dear sweet precious family that the Lord has crossed our paths with has adopted two children over the last several years and they have an amazing eight year old son that asked me if he could sell lemonade at our yard sale.  I told him I thought that would be a great idea!  He told me that we could have the money he made, I however assured him that would not be necessary and that he should save it for something he wanted.  That sweet fella was out there Friday and Saturday manning his lemonade table and doing a mighty fine job I might add!  He was sweet to all of his customers and occasionally gave refills at no charge!  My heart was blessed just to have him out there, he added such a sweet touch to the look of things!  However, come Saturday afternoon after we were just about finished cleaning up, he came outside and handed me a bag with a note in it that read, "Kid's need families.  I love you love Alex."  I sit in tears even now as I type this remembering the sweet look on his face as I finished reading that note.  I can not convey the emotions my heart was filled with after receiving this.  The bag he handed me had ALL the money he had earned which totaled $80.00.  You see this precious act was not just motivated by a good deed, but Alex was adopted and needed a family and was given one He was the recipient of people working to provide him with a family so he saw an opportunity to do that for another...I'll pause while you grab a tissue...

Alex was the Lord's exclamation mark at the end of this day as if to say, (what I've been told over and over) "It has nothing to do with you Christy! It has everything to do with MY GLORY and MY FAME!  I FUND WHAT I FAVOR!"

This experience was incredible, one I'll never forget, and one I look forward to the day to share with our sweet one to be.  The countless people that chipped in to meet a need, the beautiful the weather the Lord provided, the location He provided, the stuff people gave, the people who showed up to buy, the precious little one who gave all he earned.  Our family is forever forever forever grateful to the Lord and His people!  TO GOD BE THE GLORY GREAT THINGS HE KEEPS DOING!!!

 Just a glimpse...

Here we go...

End of day Thursday, put all the tarps on the tables to cover "merchandise" and lowered the tents...THEN PRAYED FOR NO RAIN!!!

Lots of stuff, and people hard at work!  

It was 'hoppin'

I told ya it was big!

We had something for everybody!

Before you ask...it's all sold!

Workers and supporters (also known as family :)

What's a good yard sale without some cold lemonade?

This was the AWESOME Lemonade Man! If you missed him, you missed a treat!

Awesome Lemonade Man and Crew (sorry its sideways)

We had stuff, stuff, and more stuff!

I think we had six or seven tents :) We were hard to miss!

Took a picture of the skies on my way home that night as a beautiful reminder of the Lord's faithfulness and goodness to us over the last 3 days!  I will sing His praises and tell of his mighty works because He is good!!!  Thank you Lord for your provisions through this endeavor!

O Lord My God, You are very great!

"Oh give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name; make known his deeds among the peoples! Sing to him, sing praises to him; tell of all his wondrous works! Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice!" Psalm 105:1-3

For those of you who don't know, we are putting together a Yard Sale for this coming weekend as one of our fundraisers to aid in the adoption of our son or daughter.  When we first made mention of doing this, we never in our wildest dreams would've have imagined all that would entail, but the Lord has poured forth His blessings and we are making preparations for this weekend to have an ENORMOUS yard sale.  And before we even have the sale, I wanted to "make His deeds known among the peoples, and tell of His wondrous works!"

These past several weeks, the pressure of getting this thing together has revealed much to me about my lack of faith and trust in God than I care to admit; however, it has also increased my faith and trust in God as He has demonstrated that He is not dependent on me (how's that for a humbling moment).  Through various means, this thing has come together apart from anything I could say or do.  The Lord was gracious to send lots, and lots, of people to donate stuff for the sale, and He was also kind and gracious to send people who knew what they were doing in this arena to help me put it together.  These precious people spent many many hours helping me!

I am so very humbled as I step back to look at this from a different perspective at how the Lord cares so very much about the life of this little one who will someday soon be a member of our family.  Just as God knits in the womb, He is also knitting together the way to make this adoption possible.  As I watch His mighty hand at work, I will "Glory in His name" as I seek his strength and his presence and I will "remember the wondrous works that he has done."  

"I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you."  John 14:18 I am reminded of  His promise to me, as I pursue my promise to this little one I've never met.  We will not leave you as an orphan dear one, we WILL come to you!

T'shirts With Purpose!

Our hearts have been overwhelmed to tears this week!  The outpouring of support we have received through the purchases of t-shirts and words of affirmation has been so wonderful!  Seeing people wear their t-shirts sends butterflies to my stomach each time, because the reality of all that is happening is so exciting.  We are so very thankful already for all that the Father is doing right before our very eyes and has given us an extra ounce of faith to keep believing that what seems to be impossible is possible with Almighty God!

Thank you friends and family for investing in not only our Adoption, but the cause of making Adoption known!  You are a part of something greater than a really cool t'shirt and I hope the realization of that blesses your heart immensely!

We are trusting in God to do a work that only He can do, and only He is worthy of the honor and praise! And the beauty of being a part of His work is seeing how He'll pull it all together using the obedience of His children!

***As a final update on our t'shirts.  Thank you to all of you who purchased them and are sporting them out and about! We sold 130 shirts nationwide!!!!!!  We are so thankful and humbled at the Lord's great provisions.  This fundraiser brought in about $1,500!  Thank you again, and again and again!  We love and appreciate you!

Check out this good lookin' crowd!!!

Praying for you sweet one

Your sisters never cease to pray for you.  Even though you're not in my belly, your arrival is most anticipated.  The girls often talk of how they will assist in helping to take care of you.  Although Hannah is only two, she excitedly awaits her new "baby."  She has no idea of how her world will be shaken upon the day she is no longer the baby; but her excitement I'm sure will far outweigh her realization of this minor detail.

Madie who is almost five prays for you everyday, several times a day.  She has asked about you since  before Mommy and Daddy ever began the process to bring you into our family and she can't wait to hold you and kiss you.  She tells us often of how she'll take care of you and feed you.  She asks often, "how much longer?"

Little one, you are already so very loved by two little girls and a mommy and daddy that can't wait to see your face, tickle your toes, count your fingers, and kiss your sweet cheeks.  You may not enter our family the way your sisters did, but you are still already very much a part of our family!

We love you and are praying for you wherever you are!

Because He Lives!

"How sweet to hold

 a newborn baby

 and feel the pride

 and joy he gives

but greater still

 this calm assurance

 this child can face uncertain days 

because HE lives"

As we sang this verse of this sweet old hymn this morning, my heart was flooded with thoughts of my children, the two within my home and the one yet to join us.  I was encouraged with confidence this morning that their uncertain days were in His hands, and I as a Mama could rest knowing "Because He lives", my babies have hope in this world of uncertainty.  Nevertheless, this Mama and Daddy will not cease to pray that God opens their hearts to know His TRUTH at the earliest possible age so that these "uncertain days" will be filled with a hope and a future that grants assurance this world can never offer.

May the Truth of His Word penetrate your hearts while you are young, so that He will be your EVERYTHING in a world that can offer you NOTHING!