Our daughter’s last birthday alone
On May 5th we celebrated our daughter’s last birthday without a family. She turned 14 and we prayed with all of our hearts that someone celebrated her.
If you haven’t guessed yet we are adopting! After many prayers and a visit to Colombia this past October, we were guided to a beautiful girl in need of a forever family. She is a sweet, healthy, happy young lady and we are all looking forward to her joining our family.
So far the process of adopting our daughter has been a bit challenging with financial hurdles, mounds of paperwork, and online training. But we are keeping our heads up and charging down the process with faith and love.
Our daughter still doesn’t know we are adopting her. We are very close to the matching step where they will tell her that we are adopting her but unfortunately for the last three months, our adoption process has been at a standstill.
Our recent paperwork (dossier) has been sitting on someone’s desk in her country for the past three months! I’ve been praying for understanding and patience about this recent delay and received an answer while I was studying the book of Luke. I came to the chapter where Lazarus becomes sick and Martha sends word to Jesus.
Martha knew Jesus loved Lazarus, and that he had the power to heal him, but Jesus didn’t come right away. Then Lazarus died, and Martha was frustrated with Christ’s timing. When Jesus finally arrived she collapsed at his feet with emotion. Christ comforted her, gave her hope with his words, and asked her “Do you believe this?”
After I read this I realized I was being asked, “Do you believe this?” The Lord sees the bigger picture and I need to trust his timing. I then got a strong feeling that our daughter has specific work to do in her orphanage before she comes home. In her file, it talks about how she is a good friend and leader to the other kids in her orphanage and I know in my heart that the Lord needs her to complete something before she leaves her friends.
Trusting in the Lord’s timing is hard for me. It requires believing in things that look all wrong from my perspective. Sometimes what I think is God’s apparent inaction is in fact loving and helping me in the most profound way he possibly can.
“Be of Good Cheer” is a phrase Jesus used to tell his apostles to not give up hope. It has now become our adoption anthem.
We would be thankful for any and all prayers for a speedy adoption process.
If you feel inspired please consider donating to our adoption to help us raise the final $13k we will need to travel and live in her country for a month as part of Colombia’s adoption requirements – please consider buying one of our “Be of good cheer” shirts (linked here). We appreciate and love your support!
We are hoping to travel to Colombia sometime this Fall to live with our daughter and complete the required in-country paperwork and court appearances before bringing her home.
We are so thankful for your love and support!
We have an incredible story of how we found our daughter and felt inspired to adopt her that we are excited to share once we receive permission from our adoption agency.