No measure

I wish I could express how excited I am about the way God is moving in our lives. There is no fanciful way of wording that I can use to quite paint the picture, but the last 2 days have been awesome and this journey has been chalk full of "only God" moments.
Yesterday I received a text from our good friend saying that she dreamed about our son and that she and her husband felt God was calling them to commit a tithe to our adoption journey. They weren't planning to make a 1 time contribution, but a continued contribution.
I burst into tears as I read that message. God knows that we have an extreme uphill battle to face as we go financially through this journey. The funny thing was I dreamed about him that morning as well. I saw a glimpse of him in the orphanage and then a glimpse of him,myself, and Busy Bee in our hotel in China. How cool is that? We both dreamed about my boy; her vision leading her to contribute to his journey home and mine allowing me to see him in my arms.
This brings me to another moment. I've only shared this story a few times, because I don't believe in sharing the visions that God gives me until it becomes necessary. I am just weird about people being allowed to speak into my life things God has not given them authority to speak. When you begin to share God's vision, it opens others up to desiring to share their opinion and not necessarily them looking at things through God's perspective. Okay...now on to the story:
A few months ago. I think it may have been very late winter or early spring, I dreamed of a harvest. My family and I were getting out of our van and bringing bushels of apples into the house. When I woke up, I felt God whisper "your harvest is coming." And I believed the apples to represent the fall.
Then when the first day of fall arrived I took notice. I normally am not one to pay attention to the particular days the seasons changed, but God allowed me to notice this day and I believe he was reminding me that our time was coming. Not long after that our adoption situation changed. We chose a child, we submitted our agency application and were approved, we submitted our letter of intent and were pre-approved for "Tate". It was such an exciting string of events.
Then we hit a bump and things weren't bad, but we knew we were about to face big challenges. We had to change home study agencies, which was going to be a bit of a financial setback and not one we could see a quick fix for.
Our new agency choice is based on several factors, but we know that it's a good and reliable choice.
We began to openly express to God that we knew there was a purpose for this change and that he must have a plan. I have had friends stepping up in amazing ways to help get things going.
One friend committed to donating profits from a sale and she opened a cosmetics party on my behalf. On top of that she has helped to come up with some great fundraising ideas. She has such a heart for this...it's definitely a God-given passion.
God has really shown up in an amazing way during a very scary and daunting time. This adoption is such a huge deal to us and I see why so many people have the heart, but let the battles stop them. Between paperwork and finances, I could never continue through this without God and the amazing people he has placed in our path to help us along.
God has truly made good on our harvest. And I'm willing to say he's not done yet. This is just the beginning of what he is going to do. All he is asking us to do is trust his plan for our lives.
The other thing I got to see was how God places you in just the right "family". I witnessed a church leader go above and beyond the call of duty today. He showed the love of Christ to my niece whom I believe needed it so much in that moment. He didn't just say "I'll pray for you." And then move on with business as usual. He stopped and talked with her, he gave her something to give her a leg up, and he showed a willingness to do more than most would be comfortable with.
It was a blessing to see the church practice what they preach. That's what I love about the body of believers I attend with. That's what I love about the leaders of my church. They don't just talk a good talk...they walk in it, and they aren't ashamed of that. They are unapologetically Christian. They stand strong in their beliefs, but they also are examples of why they believe it.
There is no measure for what God can do and what God can do through others. Society wants to do the watered down Jesus thing, but he has so much more to offer (even more than the tangible things I've talked about). If people could let go of what they want God and Jesus to be and just let them be who they are...they would be surprised at the way life can bless them and those around them.
~Queen Bee

Update, Thanksgiving, and Perspective

Well this has been an exciting and equally frustrating month.  We want to update quickly, before we run off to the next set of events we have going on.
On November 6th we received notification that we have Pre-approval for "Tate".  We couldn't have been more excited to get that news.  We know that means having to kick some things into gear and try to get this ball really rolling.
Unfortunately we had to terminate our relationship with our study social worker, meaning we are back at square one in this process. We know that God has a plan for all things, even this little hiccup, and we believe that we have a new agency in mind to complete the study. We are fortunate that our social worker didn't make things as difficult as she surely could have. God was looking out for us on that one for sure.  She actually made things a bit easier for us than we anticipated, which was more than we even expected her to do. For that we are grateful, even if things didn't go like we had hoped.
This isn't going to be a long blog, but I wanted to share some perspective I received recently.  Yesterday I woke up in the morning and did my usual stuff. Read my devotions, checked my email, and logged into Facebook.  I put up a greeting for Thanksgiving, but then it hit me. I had recently read things about how in China they are not able to easily access internet service or freely use social networking like Facebook.  We have our own struggles in this country, but those little things are something we truly take for granted. People whine and complain all the time about what they don't have, but they don't stop to think that what they do have is freedom. Freedom to be an individual, freedom to have an opinion and express it.  We get up and do meaningless things everyday, whereas in some places our day to day living is outlawed.
I am grateful to live in a country like ours. I am not happy with the conditions of the way we are as a nation a good portion of the time, but at least I have the right to express that I don't like it.  I wish people could wake up and look at our life for what it truly is...a blessing. One day our freedom could be a thing of the past if we aren't carefully tending to it and not just seeing it as something that is and will always be.
As I sign off, I just want to say how blessed I am for God to choose me to mother this beautiful face.  I am grateful that he will get to experience a world of freedom. I love that God has given me perspective about where he is coming from and what I am bringing him to. I am amazed at what God is always teaching me through this journey and how some things that were once taken for granted are seen as real blessings.