More then a month has gone by since my last post. It is amazing how fast time flies! We have been working on our paperwork pretty much non stop for the past weeks, getting ready for today. Our home study. I suppose it should have been stressful, logically speaking. After all, the social worker was here to interview us about our relationships, our views on parenting, our upbringings, our dreams, goals and hopes for our children...pretty big stuff. She was here also to go over paperwork...medical forms, fire safety plans, financial stuff, insurance...And to also go through our house. Is it safe to bring a child into? Well, I sure hope so, since we have raised 5 of our own here! So yeah-seems like it should have been stressful. But God showed up again, surprise, surprise! With His peace, presence and yes, even His sense of order. Things could not have flowed more smoothly. Even with the stickiness of the table that we forgot to wipe off! Yep, even the stickiness could not stop God's plan, imagine that! We laughed with "A" (the Social Worker), actually, about how we had cleaned the whole house like crazy people for 2 days. Cleaned it top to bottom. Places we maybe have never cleaned before (yes, Anna, like that crazy spin around soap thing in the bathroom wall that we never use...you wouldn't recognize it), and yet, we forgot to wipe down the table where we would be sitting this morning with all this paperwork. "A" laughed and swiped some crumbs off the table onto the floor, plopped down her paperwork, and from there on out we all just "clicked". Why does that amaze me? Why am I surprised? Over and over and over again, God has shown us that this is His plan for us. I am thankful that He has assured us of this and has affirmed it over and over...because then the little crumbs don't bother us...and we can actually even laugh about them. Because He has this whole thing under control. And He sees the entire picture!
That isn't saying that the fear doesn't try to creep in. We are well aware that bringing an older child into the family is a lot different then bringing in an infant or even a toddler. We've gone through training, classes, seminars. Online and in person with social workers. We've heard the best...we've heard the worst.... We realize that our girl most likely comes from a not so good background. That this in itself will bring a whole new realm of challenges into our lives and into the lives of our own children. This is something we discuss...something we are open about with each other and with the kids....It's something that has caused us to hesitate, to reconsider...and yet there is .... something.....someone.... who pushes us onward...I would even say compels us. All of us. And so we move forward, even though we know that we could stop at any time, and the fear would dissolve, relief would wash over us, and we could just continue on with every day life. We move forward...because we know that that feeling of relief would be temporary. Very short lived. We move forward....Because we know. We know that if we stop, we would always wonder, what if we hadn't let fear stop us? What if we hadn't let the crumbs trip us up? We know that if we stop, we would always wonder.... did our girl ever get a home? Did she get a family? Opportunity?
We would always wonder.... what would God have had for us if we hadn't given in to logic and fear but instead had listened to that still small voice in our hearts? We would always wonder..
...what did we miss out on.....
....what did we lose?
...what would the whole picture have looked like....
......If we had just swept the crumbs away?
