Grateful Hearts

God has given us so much.  We are so blessed and so grateful.  Despite the tornado path that is our house, the Amazon rain forest that is our yard and the incredible stress we maneuver every day, we have so much in which to be grateful.

            Ashley and I hold a high value on relationships, experience and learning.  We feel like God teaches us the most when we are walking with other people and sharing our lives with them, when we are doing something new and exciting and when we are humbling ourselves to leaa ICU RN, I’ve had my share of days where I just wanted to crawl in a hole and die.

            This adoption journey is no different.  It’s just another chance to see God show up and do amazing things.  He already has and He will continue to do them.  Not because He has to for us or even because He wants to; it’s his Nature.  It’s his Personality.  One of the most amazing things in Scripture to me is that when Moses is frustrated and says but when the people ask me, “Who sent you? What is his Name?”  God said you are to tell them YHWH sent you.  We translate it I AM WHO I AM. He tells Moses to tell the people, “I AM sent you…” Phillip Yancey in The Jesus I Never Knew talks about that statement and then how God fulfills it throughout Scripture.  Yancey describes it as a blank check.  I AM YOUR ROCK, I AM YOUR SHELTER, I AM YOUR PROVIDER, I AM YOUR DELIVERER, I AM YOUR SAVIOR, I AM YOUR DAILY BREAD. I AM __________________.  I AM ALL THAT YOU NEED.  He is the meaning of existing on this earth.  I don’t think God provided because He had to or even because He wanted to (although, I’m pretty certain He enjoyed it), I think He provided because it’s in His nature.  The Jewish people had and have many names for God.  One seems especially appropriate today, Jehovah Jireh, the Lord Will Provide.  This term is first used when Abraham is called to sacrifice Isaac and God provides a ram for the sacrifice instead of Isaac.  It took a lot of faith and trust for Abraham to make that trip; I can’t imagine what was going through his head.  Ashley and I long to do something amazing and different; we don’t want our lives to be explainable without God’s work.  We long to change the world or be a part of something bigger than ourselves – leave a legacy.  It doesn’t start by doing amazing things; it starts by doing ordinary things like saying yes to something big when you don’t know how God is going to answer or how it’s going to end up.  Forget being ready or qualified.  Very few people that we would say are heroes of faith had much to offer to the world.  We miss this sometimes but Jesus picked mostly leftovers as his disciples.  If they were the cream of the crop, they would have been chosen to study with another rabbi.  To be honest, four were backwoods fishermen.

             Ashley and I have what we need, but we aren’t “financially stable.”  We have two cars with over 100,000 miles and 1,000 dents, we have appliances from the last millenium and we have at least 14 loads of laundry that need to be washed. We aren’t “ready” or “able”, just willing.  I pray that we continue to be willing and that you who are following our journey would be willing too.

            We are so grateful to you all who gave; our hearts and lives are overwhelmed with joy in this moment.  We pray that God would provide and bless you in thousands of ways in which you could have never imagined. In other words, we hope that your life isn’t explainable without God’s work in it… - Sam