BLESSED ASSURANCE

I feel extraordinarily privileged to be someone that follows Christ.  I became a Christian when I was very young, thanks to my parents influence and God's ultimate grace in my life, and I don't remember life before thinking of Jesus as my Savior.  I've not had a perfect life path, nor always an easy one, but I can look back over my life and see the Lord's hand in it in so many ways.

As an adult, I am amazed at the ways that God has worked in my life.  He has done things that I could never have imagined in it.  A dear friend came to visit us for a day, and at dinner last night we were reflecting about all that the last eight years have brought.  This friend knew us well in college and probably deserves a post all to herself for the many roles that she played in our lives and even in our relationship coming to fruition - another story for another time.  I've written before about how we came to be a part of CFA, and that is a pretty amazing God story.  Any time things are challenging or we feel at a loss, we can always look back and know that only God could have put us exactly where we are.  It was not for our cleverness or charm, but it was what God had for us.

I LOVE knowing something beyond a shadow of a doubt, and when God writes the story instead of us coming up with it, we can trust in what the story brings - both good and bad, because in the end, it will all be for God's greater glory and our good.

I can already see that this adoption adventure is much the same way.  Anytime I reflect back on how this story has unfolded, I am still left in open-mouthed shock about how it came about.  How just the right person heard about the twins at just the right time and thought of us.  How Gran Gran was praying and fighting on behalf of these children that would become ours.  How God placed them in our family just days after they were born.  All miracles.  Undeniably God's hand making us a forever family.

But that doesn't mean that this road will be or has been without its bumps.  Fear and anxiety have funny ways of lurking and creeping into places they were never meant to be.  I am not a fearful person by nature, nor a worrier, but there are unknowns about all we are getting into.  Which is true in all of parenting, whether the children are biological or adopted - but the stakes are raised a bit with adoption.  It throws another curve ball into everything.  There are different hoops to jump through.

I'll share one small example of how this has played out for me already.  Both babies have been growing and developing really well.  However, they have been a bit behind on the smiling front, which has made me sad.  I love getting that connected feedback from a tiny baby, and to have it missing, at an age when it *should* be there has been worrying.  Your mind can go all kinds of places when there is any kind of delay.  And it has caused me to realize all over again that I do not hold the future of my children in my hands.  Not even a little bit.  I cannot force them to do anything, nor can I see how things will turn out.

The doctor did confirm that they were behind and said that if that were still the case at four months, then we would start some kind of therapy.  I can't even imagine what "smile therapy" for four month olds looks like.  So, I've been praying for smiles, especially from Violet who seems so very serious.  Just last night, we got some very sweet smiles from her, and my eyes filled with tears as I cheered her on.



I'm hopeful that this will not be an isolated incident, and I rejoiced in the joy of a prayer heard and answered.  But even if she had never smiled or never smiles again, I know that God knows exactly what he is up to.  Violet and I need each other for reasons that God knows, and I am looking forward to a journey that will be blessed by him because he forged it.  I am so thankful for the blessed assurance of being a child of the one true King and what a privilege it is to know that he is caring for us, in things both big and small, always for his glory and our good.  He is so great, and I am so thankful.