Yesterday we received word that we will be receiving a $3000 matching grant from Lifesong for Orphans paid for by a church in Irving, Texas. We are sooooooo very excited and humbled and grateful. A church that doesn’t even know us entrusting us with this gift and believing in us and loving orphans and sharing the passion and burden and responsibility that we so strongly feel ourselves. There are just no words to tell how happy this made us.

  And then today we found out that a couple (who wishes to remain anonymous) is going to match the entire $3,000 grant. And excitement does not even touch what we feel tonight.

  We are still waiting for that final piece of paper to come in the mail so we can send our paperwork to Ethiopia.  Please pray that it comes quickly!!

 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who has been walking this journey with us. You have become family to us as you have invested your time, prayer, and/or money to help us bring our baby home!

 I am holding inside of me a promise from God. I heard Him speak to me and tell me that I would grow in maturity on this journey we are on. I know that my flesh should balk at this; for maturity is often a product of coming out on the other side of difficulty. But the redeemed part of myself knows that I am in desperate need of a good steroid dose of maturity.

I have begun to notice the change. God breaking my heart and molding me into something different. Exhorting me to be willing to be a voice for the nations, the poor, the orphaned, those who can’t speak up for themselves. And at the same time exhorting me to be very careful of my words. Even words that seem “from Him.” He is bridling my tongue. Telling me to push end on the phone instead of send. To delete that email that I am sure sounds perfect. To pray in the spirit before I share my opinion which nine times out of ten results in me uhm..NOT sharing my opinion.

Last night I was talking to the Lord and I said, “You’re kind of confusing you know! In my times with You, You are stirring me to speak out, to not be afraid or ashamed to share of the things You are revealing to me from your Word. Yet it seems like when I leave the secret place with You, your voice is telling me to be quiet. To wait.” Feeling perplexed, I asked Him in exasperation, “Do you want me to speak out or not?!”

And I heard Him whisper, “Its a dance, Christina”
And suddenly my world spinned upside down and I stood face to face with the reality of the intimacy that He wants to have with me.  And I felt ashamed at how I belittle the romance that He offers.

This evening I was cooking and listening to worship music and watching my children play in the backyard with the puppy. And I was feeling sad. I felt sad that there are millions and millions of orphans that are in desperate need of food, a home, a Daddy to play with and a Mommy to hug.  I am sad that I am so willing, so longing to give ourselves to one of these (at least!) and yet it takes so much work, time, and money to be able to do it. The more God breaks my heart, not just for our child, but for all orphans, the more empty I feel in this time of waiting. The longing is similar to being pregnant, but it is mixed with the grief that my baby is already born and there is absolutely no way I can get to him or her right now. No way that I can hold him, no way that I can make sure she has the nourishment and medical care she needs, no way that I can look in his eyes and let him hear my voice, no way that I can kiss away her tears and hug her tight. All I can do is wait.

These thoughts were welling up inside of me this evening until I just wanted to sit down and cry and then He whispered to me again

 “Slow dance with Me, Christina.”

And He held me. And I savored Him. And I trust Him.

Our pastor says that sometimes God does things in nature to symbolize what is going on in the spiritual. He showed many examples from the scriptures.

On Monday we decided to take this whole week to pray for a miracle for our family (post about that written below) and I have been praying for miracles for several of my friends.

And this morning we woke up to a ice wonderland. Our city doesn’t get ice. I don’t know the statistics for ice, but I know that it has only snowed here once in the past one hundred years.

Today I am receiving this picture as a sign from the Lord that He hears our prayers and He is working out His perfect plan on our behalf and on behalf of our baby boy or girl in Ethiopia.

 We are lacking one small but very important piece of paper to complete our dossier. According to many others that have completed the paperwork process this paper should come in around 2 weeks after your fingerprinting appointment. This Friday will be two weeks for us. I cannot believe that we are that close. I think back to the overwhelming feeling I had on September 27th when we got the huge pile of documents that told what all we needed to get done. And now we have reached the end of the road.

In order to send our completed paperwork to Ethiopia we have to send our agency a check for $7200. We have $3581 of that ready to go. So starting today we are praying for God to miraculously provide $3619 by Friday. Saturday night I read this verse and God poured into my heart a great measure of faith as I meditated on it:

“Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear to dull to hear.” Isaiah 59:1

This morning in my devotional book they gave four verses to look up. This was one of them:

Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you.” Genesis 28:15

Today as I started school with the kids, I told them about the miracle we were praying for. We talked about the miracles God had done in the Bible. I told them that there was a song in my heart that I wanted us to sing together. It was a song I haven’t sang in a long time. “Show Your Power.” I looked it up on youtube. This is how we sing a lot of our songs for school. I look the song up on youtube and then choose the first one that comes straight from a CD because the audio is better. When I looked up “Show your Power” the first hit was not from a CD but the second one was. The CD was entitled: Worship Africa. This CD was made in Africa the song had a very African sound. How great is that??!! We sang the song together and then we all three knelt by the couch, held hands, and prayed that God would show His power this week! We look forward to testifying about what He does!!

Here is our new adoption T-shirt!! $16 plus $2 to ship. Sizes S – 2XL. Email us if you would like one: blakeandchristina@yahoo.com

And as a reminder here is our other t-shirt.  Same prices and sizes except we also have childrens sizes in this one.

Here’s to hoping that writing it down will help me get it right….every time.

1. Don’t share with your husband that sweet thing some other wife’s husband “always” does; Even if you’re not trying to manipulate (yeah right) that is how he will take it, and chances are instead of starting to cook breakfast, bring you roses, write you poetry, or whatever that other guy does, he will back off on that wonderful thing HE does for you that other husbands don’t.

2. There are two sides to every story. But if your husband is telling you his side – you are ALWAYS on his side. But don’t get your panties into too big of a wad at the other guy because, well….there are two sides to every story.

3. If you’re griping about his family, don’t expect him to chime in with the list of grievances he has against them. Loyalty is a beautiful thing. If he is loyal to them, then he will be loyal to you.

4. My husband, like most men, isn’t a big talker. So I know that when he does talk, I have to listen. Stop what I am doing, sit down, look him in the eye, and don’t interrupt. This is honor. This will wrap your heart around his, and his around yours like nothing else will.

5. Video taping your husband snoring and then showing it to him the next day will not make him quit snoring. You can trust me on this one, but feel free to try it at home.
 
6. Work is work and home is home. If he wants to talk to you about work, then listen, but if he doesn’t, then for heaven’s sake give it a rest.

7. At least once a month, after he’s fallen asleep, lay your hand on his shoulder and pray your heart out for him. Its like Narnia – going on an adventure with God and he never knows about it, but things happen!

Do you ever feel like you’re juggling just a few too many balls, and you’re sure you’ve dropped a couple but just don’t have the time look around for the dropped ones? Blake and I are totally there right now!

 I realized this week that we had not ever sent a thank you note out to our worship team that had taken up an offering for us as a Christmas gift. ( I know: bad, bad, bad!) I did a rough draft thank you email and sent it to Blake to touch up and send on to the worship team. I added a note at the end to one specific couple thanking them for a frame they had given us. Then an hour later I called and told him, “Oh yeah and Mrs. Edna gave us a gift card – make sure to add that!”

Side note: We got several gift cards at Christmas from church members: Target, WalMart, Cinemark, Cheddars,  and Corinos(?).

Well I just received the email that Blake sent out to the team. The last line was a special thanks to Mrs. Edna for the gift card. Blake told her, “We plan to use this for a date night.”

I emailed back, “Uhm, Honey, Mrs. Edna gave us a gift card to WalMart.”

 When our little world gets shaken, our human nature is to find a solution. To get help. To find relief. Each one of us finds a way to alleviate that feeling of panic. I have had more moments of panic in the past four months than I have ever had. Seesawing between peaceful assurance that God is for me, to moments of wanting to rewind time back to where life was a little more predictable. Erase this craziness and bring back my life plan that was concise and sensible.

I know, I know, I KNOW that God is my rock and that in Him alone I will find everything I need, but my spirit man is lazy. I do not have the learned discipline to wait in His presence until I feel His peace and His voice. It doesn’t come quick enough for me so I seek out other coping mechanisms: a coke, chocolate, calling my mom or a friend, talking an issue to death at the expense of my poor husband’s sanity, racking my brain to think up a plan to assure an easy path to my “dream” existence: one where everyone likes me and my family and where we experience nothing but loveliness. Those substitutes do help me. I feel better after a coke and a nice talk with my mom. But guess what, it makes me lazier. You know those guys in the Bible, the ones that did radical, amazing things for the Kingdom of God. They knew how to wait on the voice of God. They knew how to follow the voice of God even when circumstances made it look like He had lied to them. They didn’t look for an easy way out. They weren’t concerned about loveliness. They certainly weren’t out to win a popularity contest – they took big risks. They were history makers.

Moses
Joseph
Joshua
Ruth
Esther
Isaiah
John the Baptist
Jesus
Paul

So I ask myself again, “Why are you here, Christina?” Am I here to just get by, to have the easiest life possible, to never make waves, to blend in to society? Or am I here to be a living sacrifice, give my life away for the One who gave His life away for me? If I am going to live life the second way…consistently….joyfully….sometimes getting dirty, failing miserably, risking it all…. Then I HAVE to, I HAVE to, I HAVE to, learn how to wait on God. I have to learn how to run to God first, instead of, or at least before, I turn to anything else. I must train myself to run to Him every time and to wait on Him until He gives me everything I need to stand back up in any storm. And I believe that as I learn to do this, I will reach the point that I don’t have to run anymore because I am already there. Right there in the shower of His love so that no matter what comes against me I will never be shaken because I know without a doubt that I am safe.

Psalms 16:8
“I keep my eyes always on the LORD. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.”

“I could not help but think that somewhere along the way we had missed what is radical about our faith and replaced it with what is comfortable. We were settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.”
David Platt in Radical
  

We have to do a lot of required reading as a part of our adoption process. Right now we are reading a book entitled: Inside Transracial Adoption. The fact is, we, as white people in America, have no idea what it is like to be an African American. I am sickened as I realize the ideas that I have accepted as truth for as long as I can remember, are just blatant proof of our pride and unrighteous judgmental attitudes.  The farther I read in this book, the more intense my feelings against racism are becoming. I am hoping and praying that it is a righteous anger. How do you know if something is “righteous anger”?

 I have been offended by prejudice attitudes for a long time….probably since Junior High, but I have never been vocal about it. I don’t like for people to be upset with me. I want everyone to like me. I have been thinking about those two parts of me this morning: the anger I feel towards racism and the overwhelming desire I have for all people to like me. I asked myself how I would have chosen to live my life in the days of slavery. I can’t begin to pretend that I would have stood up for the lives of the beautiful, intelligent, and strong African people, since I choose time and time again to stay quiet when people “accidentally” or purposely let ugly and ignorant things spew from their mouths about races other than their own. I really despise myself for this.