Chronicling the joys and challenges of fostering and adopting.


Tuesday, November 13, 2012

God's Provision

Let me start my first blog by saying, "May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" (Gal 6:18).

To make an incredibly long story short, our God has been doing an incredible work in me (and my husband) this past year. It has been painful, yet wonderful. I have been a Christian for as long as I can remember, and there have been quite a few times that I knew I was walking close to Him. But the truth of the matter is, I slipped away...a lot. He brought me gently back into His fold, and He has been lovingly molding me to Himself since.

Throughout this time, He has made if very clear to my husband and I that we needed to become foster parents. Although terrified at the prospect of our lives completely changing, we knew that we couldn't ignore this burden from God. We took the plunge. This Saturday I will complete all my training and should be licensed to accept foster children starting next week. Next week! Since starting the whole process we were continually going back and forth on the age of the child we might accept, or if we should even accept two! But we know we are not ready emotionally or even physically to accept any over the age of 8. We know we want to be fully engaged emotionally with the older children, but with us having a toddler of our own, a lot of time goes in to just monitoring her actions. So we finally decided that we would accept ONE child between the ages of 0-5yrs.

While going through the training our hearts broke more and more. Every Sunday at church a song would play talking about how God is the Father to the Fatherless. How I desperately wanted to take in as many children and tell them of this TRUTH! But we just physically couldn't. Because of the legalities concerning foster care, one child could share Abby's room, and another little baby could sleep in our room, but our car couldn't fit three kids in the back, it could only barely squeeze two. My heart continued to break because of this. But God has been teaching me a lot. Sean and I started praying. If God wanted us to have two more kids then He would just have to provide us with a van. But vans are expensive! He would have to do nothing short of a miracle for that to happen. Even if we could save anything, it would take us probably two years. How could we wait two years to love on more children?!?

But I didn't know what my God had in store for us.

Yesterday, I opened the door to find a manila envelope tucked underneath our doormat. I picked it up and tossed it on the couch (we were on our way to meet Daddy at his truck). The envelope would have to wait.

When we got back, I opened the package and I started shaking. Honestly, I was almost scared. What was all this?! Is this some sort of a joke? A sick joke? No. It's God. God had used an angel of His to give us $5,000.00 in cash! The note was typed and said:


"God hears you."


 I started sobbing. Could God truly have heard  our cry? Why was I in such disbelief? This past year, and truly, my whole life God has shown Himself to be nothing short of AWESOME. But this, this seems to be such a tangible, real act of God! It is a miracle.

God has brought us to a place that we have challenged Him to "throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it" (Mal 3:10). Well, we "tested" (3:10) Him in it and He has done just that. He has poured an abundance of blessing on us. To almost make a joke out of the whole thing, He even gave us a free ice cream while at McDonald's last night for dinner. To me He seems to be saying, "You don't even know the half of what I can do when you trust me."

I could keep on going and going, but I think I should stop here, with God's greatness. I pray that everyone will know God like this.

"Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,' says the Lord Almighty, 'and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of Heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it." Malachai 3:10