Remember Sara and Don? They Have a Story to Finish!

There are occasions in our lives when sitting in the waiting room of life can seem as if time is wasted. Though, at times, we do not see or understand the purpose in waiting it is a time to be reminded that God is working, moving and plotting for our good. Joy comes in the morning.

Don and Sara have known the waiting room well. It has been a deep valley for them and a rich experience as they have watched and waited with patience for God to mold shape and give greater form to their family. Beyond their wildest dreams God gave them exactly what they had hoped and prayed for - TWINS. He needed to have them wait for their boys to become their boys.

Dear reading friends, you learned about Don and Sara in January. It was only part of the story. Now, you get to finish the story. To God be the GLORY!!!!!!

We got our referral in November 2011.  We had hoped for a court date within three months, which was our estimated time-frame. Continuing with our previous theme of delays and setbacks, our court date wasn’t issued until 6 months after we had received our referral. We were just taking the first of two required trips right around the time that we had hoped that we would have our sons home. There was a period of time during this delay that we actually feared that something was going to happen to cause the adoption to fall through. The Ethiopian courts weren’t issuing us a court date and no one seemed to understand why.

We did finally receive a court date for May 5, 2012. The week we spent in Ethiopia for court was unforgettable and one of the happiest weeks of our lives. We passed court right away, which meant that our sons were officially “our” sons, and we got to spend the rest of the week enjoying them. We loved them instantly and God used our time with them to bond our hearts to them in a very special way.

Adopting from Ethiopia requires two trips, which meant that after our week with our sons, we had to return home and wait for the remaining paperwork to be completed before we could legally and officially take them home with us for good. It was approximately 2.5 months before we returned to Ethiopia and much of that time was spent praying and fasting for our sons. They were our sons; we had held and kissed them, fed them, changed them, and rocked them to sleep, and now we were again separated by thousands of miles. The Lord was teaching us during this time to continue to entrust them to his care; he reminded us that he was the one caring for them all of those months while we waited and he would continue to do so.

At the end of July, we decided we had waited long enough and we booked one-way tickets to Ethiopia in order to spend the remainder of our wait with the boys. We had no idea how long we would have to wait while in Ethiopia, but we hoped and prayed that it wouldn’t be more than two weeks. We ended up spending 10 days together in a hotel room before receiving the boys’ visas and being cleared to take them home.

We arrived home on the 2^nd of August to a crowd of family and friends cheering for us at the airport. We had traveled over 24 hours and missed two nights of sleep, but that couldn’t squelch the utter joy and relief of finally being home. I’ll never forget putting the boys in their car seats for the first time and thinking, “They’re really here. They’re home.” It was one of the sweetest moments to watch their tired, sleepy heads rest against their car seats as we left the airport and turned onto the interstate.

We’ve been home now for almost two months, and the relief and thankfulness still haven’t subsided. Almost daily, I feel a measure of surprise and relief that they are really home. For years we had prayed for children and then for months we had specifically waited and prayed for these two boys and suddenly they are home with us. There is a park near our house that my husband and I would often take prayer walks to and I spent a lot of that time praying for our sons. I would see these two little baby swings and imagine having the boys swinging and smiling side by side. Now we take the boys to the park with us and they really do smile and swing side by side. It’s their favorite thing to do at the park and it is a picture of answered prayer to me.

Looking back, it’s hard to pinpoint all that God has taught us during this process. I’m sure there are ways that the pain and the prayers and the waiting have shaped us that we aren’t even fully aware of yet, but I do know that God has used the waiting for children and a difficult adoption process to teach us to trust him, to center our lives on him, to find our joy and purpose in him, and to let go of our lives here on earth.

When I look at our sons, I am filled with joy and an intense love that I could never have imagined. I love to love them, and I marvel that God gave them to us. He planned them for us. It took over 5.5 years of infertility, close to 3 years in a mostly dark adoption tunnel, and thousands of miles of separation, but God gave them to us. He entrusted them to us. All of our delays and the pain and the prayers were leading to two little boys born in a remote village in northern Ethiopia that would one day be our sons.

There isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t thank God for them. He spared and sustained their lives throughout months of malnourishment, two different orphanages, and various caregivers, and then he brought our whole adoption process to completion so that on August 2^nd, we could walk through our front door as a family of four. This is one of the great “goods” that came out of our waiting, but it isn’t the only one.

Probably more significant is the good that God has done within our hearts. We have learned, though not perfectly, to treasure God above all else. He used our waiting to turn our eyes more fully to him. We have learned to apply the gospel to our lives. The death of Christ on our behalf and the reconciliation that we have with God proves that God is for us and utterly trustworthy, no matter what we are going through. We have asked hard questions, such as: What is really important in life? What do we want to accomplish? What are our priorities? Years ago, we would have been satisfied with 2-3 little carbon copies of ourselves, a nice little house, a nice little life: the American dream. We’ve seen through that façade now and have an intensified desire to use our lives to glorify God and do good to others.

We couldn’t see the end of our story 5.5 years ago. We couldn’t see how all of the delays were working for our good. We couldn’t see how having to wait longer was going to shape our priorities, our faith, and ultimately lead us to our sons, but it did. And we wouldn’t change a thing.

We don’t know what it’s like to love a biological child, but I can tell you that loving our adopted children is amazing. On the one hand, we love them with a natural love. They are our sons and we delight in them. And in addition to that, there is this sense that God is with us and is loving them through us. He is the father to the fatherless and the bible makes it clear that he has a special love for the orphan. When we hear their laughter and see them smile, I sense the pleasure of God.

Often during our process, I read the following quote from John Piper. It gave me great encouragement when we were in the midst of our tunnel, and reading it now on the other side, it rings even more true.

“Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories is to help us feel in our bones not just know in our heads, that God is for us in all of these strange turns.

The life of the godly is not a straight line to glory. It’s more like a dark and seemingly unknown trail through the mountains. There are rockslides and slippery curves, and hairpin turns that make you go backward in order to go forward.

But along this hazardous twisted road that doesn’t let you see very far ahead, and may even make you feel like you’ve been lead to the edge of the cliff, God gives us encouragement and hope that all the perplexing turns in our lives are going somewhere good.

Often when we think God is farthest from us, and has even turned against us, the truth is, that he is laying a foundation for greater happiness in our lives. God is plotting for our joy. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ."

From John Piper's book, A Sweet and Bitter Providence