Our family update...

To each of you who have been praying for our family…thank you! 

How are we doing with the loss of Symonne's referral...

The abbreviated version:  We are doing OK, by God’s grace!

The lengthy version:  Immediately following the loss of Symonne’s referral there was great loss.  A hole.  A pit.  An emptiness.  Our kids took the news very hard and we kept them home from school the next day and had a precious day being together as a family.  As we began to share with others the news, the Lord lifted us up.

He began to fill the emptiness with HOPE.  God does not waste anything.  We believe that He did not waste this referral on our family.  God knew what He was doing to sign us up for a lifetime of praying for this child.  Though we will never know on this earth what comes about in her life, we will continue to pray for her.  Our prayer would be that she would know the Lord and serve Him faithfully and amazingly.  And if God needed to perfectly position her in Ethiopia, He did it.  If He needed a family across the world (ours) to pray for this precious girl for the rest of her life and He did it…He signed us up!  And it is our privilege!

Oh, the ache of the loss has been real.  We each have processed it differently and that is OK.  The days following there were so many reminders of her…the delivery of the stuff I had ordered from Amazon for her and for our trips, the dresser that I had cleared out in Ellyana’s room, her pictures on our fridge, our summer calendar awaiting our travel dates, the list is endless of the reminders of her.

1st Sunday to Church Dress and hair clip

Blankets from Grandma

Rompers that had been ordered, delivered the day after we lost her referral...cute summer picture of the girls together!

 We would say there were 2 different aspects of the loss…the loss of her, to know her, to touch her, to hear her, to smell her, to love on her.  And then there was the loss of the plans, the dreams of the fulfillment of the waiting.  They each came in waves at different times.  

Thankfully, each day has felt less "raw".

God’s grace is so sufficient and as I thought many times…He wasn’t the least bit surprised by any of this.  He is so big!  We were so thankful for the amazing outpouring of love we felt from the many, many cards and messages we received.  I would read them over and over again letting reality sink in. The number of people praying has been amazing! There has been grief and loss and yet even greater is our hearts “feeling settled” and peaceful…it is a God-thing!

Through all of this as a family of 5, we have not felt that this has changed our heart that this is the adoption journey God still has us on.  With prayer and at the time we felt peaceful, we moved back on the “waitlist” for an infant girl.  We are at "#1" and waiting. A piece of our hearts and our prayers will continue to be with Symonne every time we remember her.  And we stand humbly before the Lord waiting to see who He has for our family in HIS perfect time.  God is so very faithful!  We count it a privilege to walk with Him and we continue to follow Him on this journey!

Our hope is in the Lord our God, the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them–
 the Lord, who remains faithful forever.  from Psalm 146