Being Honest

***Disclaimer*** This post is more for my sake then anyone else's. I love writing. Writing is healing for me. It helps me see things more clearly. That's why I'm writing this. But if you find you can relate to what I'm saying, please let me know! It's a good feeling to know that I'm not alone!

God's been doing some crazy things to my heart lately.

I think He's been doing this for a while now, but I only started recognizing it a couple of weeks ago. During Thanksgiving weekend our church had it's annual missions conference. We went Friday night, missed Saturday night and went again Sunday morning. I'm still trying to process that weekend. The words the speaker shared were powerful, convicting, and hard to here. They were straight from the mouth of God,

We were challenged to love our neighbors better, to be seeking out the lost and to be seeking out God.

I struggle with the seeking out God part. God and I have been on a crazy journey together and I love Him with all of my being but I really struggle with picking up my Bible. It's always been hard for me. I never seem to know what I should read and most of the time I feel like I'm just reading it because I know I should and if I make it through my daily reading, I'll be good to go for the rest of the day. I know it's not supposed to be like this. And it's not always like that, but 90% of the time it is. I feel like a failure. I feel like I let God down most days.

I also struggle with the loving my neighbor part. I'm a stay at home mom and I don't get a lot of interaction with people over 3 feet tall. It's mostly just me and Cassidy, all day long. I miss being out in the workforce where I can live out my faith in a tangible way and maybe even strike up a conversation with someone about it. I feel like I'm failing at loving my neighbor. Yet lately God's been showing me that right now, in this moment, my job is to be showing His love to Cassidy. So I'm pouring my everything into that right now, praying with all that I am that one day she'll make the decision to accept Christ as her Savior.

I used to be pretty content in my walk with God. I knew I wasn't perfect, but I went to church and I didn't swear and I was nice to people and I prayed. I knew what God did for me and I was thankful. I still do all these things but I don't feel content, per say. I've been feeling a great burden in my heart for those that don't know Jesus. I've been downright saddened by comments on Facebook that people have made, such as "I'm going to hell anyway, may as well enjoy the ride," or just other bitter comments that make it very obvious they are hurting and angry at God, or that they just want nothing to do with Him whatsoever. This has been literally breaking my heart lately and since Thanksgiving weekend I've realized that God is changing something in me. I always pray to me more like Jesus, and I think He's been answering my prayers without me being fully aware of it. He's helping me see how He sees the world. He's breaking my heart for what breaks His.

So I'm going to keep on reading my Bible, even when I don't want to. I'm going to keep on praying to be more like Jesus, because I'm an unfinished work. I'm going to keep looking for opportunities to love others and share the gospel with them. And I'm going to keep on keeping on, loving Jesus and looking like Him as best I can. Because even though it's hard sometimes, and even though I feel like I fail on the daily, His grace lifts me up again and sets me back on my feet and says "Keep going. Look to the cross. I am with you. I love you."

So thankful for that marvelous, infinite, matchless grace.

Pressing On

Hello friends,
Just logged in here to share a quick update with you. Our final meeting with our social worker is on Monday. I was feeling discouraged the other day. I received an email from her that for some reason didn't get to me the first time, so not hearing back from me, she sent it again. We found out that we need to complete 10 hours of adoption education that we had previously thought did not apply to us. This was frustrating as I thought it would be a sit down course that we'd have to take over the next few weeks. Our lives are already so busy, I did not know how we were going to find the time to do that. Thankfully, after some digging and asking around (the adoption group on Facebook has been the hugest blessing!) I found out that you can buy the online course and do it all online. What a relief! We bought the course and are hoping to start it tomorrow and get a good chunk of it done. I always get immediately discouraged when little setbacks happen and I was talking complaining about it to John and he said "Maybe these delays happen because God has a specific baby in mind for us and it's not that time yet." Oh, he always knows what to say to encourage me! I have been reminding myself of this over the past few days.
I also finished the profile book that we need to make for our agency. This was a lot of work and even though I enjoyed putting it together, it was also hard. And humbling. Our agency said to make sure that everything sounds really positive and not to include anything about struggles, hard times, etc. Even though these things are a very real part of our lives, the mothers looking at these books don't want to see that. They want to see the happy, shiny side of our lives. This makes sense to me, but I still felt almost egotistical as I purposely left out the hard parts of marriage, parenting, etc and just showed the good. I think it turned out really good and we should be receiving it by early November!
That's where we're at right now! I have been so encouraged by people's prayers as of late. They are not going un-noticed, by God or by us! So thank you! My Mary Kay party is tonight and I've had quite a few people volunteer to do baking for us in November, so that's been great! I'm so excited that the paperwork part is almost done!! I can't wait until the day we find out we're on the waiting list! God is so good and we are so blessed.
Thanks friends!

Perfect is Over-Rated

I couldn't sleep last night so I was perusing the Internet and decided to check out our adoption agency's website again. I stumbled across some testimonials from people that have used their agency (which are always helpful and encouraging) and I was reading through some of them and in one of the stories a couple shared that from the time their initial paperwork was completed until the time they held their newborn in their arms was 6 months! 
6 months!
If this wasn't enough to make my jaw drop, they continued to say that they thought it was so neat how while they were still in the paperwork process, the birth mom was already pregnant with their baby. 
Hold the phone.
Our baby could be alive. Forming, growing. Right. Now. 
This was something I never considered. I figured we'd get the paperwork in, wait a few months, hear about a lady who just found out she was pregnant, yada yada yada. It never dawned on me that when we get a referral she could only be months or even weeks away from giving birth! 
(As you can imagine, this didn't help my not-sleeping issue!)
But seriously. This is all I can think about today. Productivity is out the window (good thing my house is clean!)

Speaking of paperwork, we are almost done (can I get a Hallelujah?) We have our final meeting on the 21st then our home study gets sent to Regina, and I've just begun to work on our profile book to send to our agency. This is stressing me out a bit. I want so badly for it to be perfect, after all this book is the means by which someone picks us! My loving, ever calm and rational husband reminded me last night that people don't want to see perfect. They want to see real. I need to keep remembering that. It seems that people only post the "perfect" parts of their life on all these social media outlets, but the reality is no one's life is perfect. My child is not perfect. My marriage is not perfect. God knows this, and he takes our inadequacies and uses them to show us HIS glory, HIS perfection. I love this passage in 2 Cor- 

"Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

I'm having a Mary Kay party next Friday and the money from the sales is going towards our adoption. I've had a good response and even some that can't make it are still ordering so I'm excited for that! Also on Nov. 16 we're having a baking table at the Warman Craft and Bake Sale. I've had a number of people that are going to do baking for us, and I'm still looking for more. If you would like to help out in that way, please talk to me! 

I'm praying even harder for the wonderful lady that could be, at this moment, carrying our child. Please if you think about us, pray for her as well. I can't imagine what she's going through so I'm lifting her up to the One who does. Thanks for reading my random thoughts and for the continued prayers. We are definitely feeling them! I love the body of Christ!

Blessings

What a day...

You ever have those days where you feel like you are just getting showered with little blessings- blessings that God knew you needed but that you weren't even asking for on that particular day, or thinking about, or praying about...yeah....it was one of those days.

I'm a woman...and being a woman, my mind is often racing with multiple thoughts at once, most of them completely random and changing by the second (it's exhausting). Of course, there's been one thing that's dominated most of my thoughts over the past few months and that's our adoption. Some days I'll be doing normal, everyday things and I'll think about a baby, and what I would be doing if I had a baby at that moment, and butterflies will fill my stomach and I might even get a bit teary eyed....of course, these thoughts often lead to prayers. Prayers for our baby, for her birth mother, for the paperwork that still needs to get done, for the money...mostly for the money. 

Today I wasn't really thinking about our adoption much. Cassidy was in a mood and I had errands to run and we went to Mom and Tot time at the gym and I was just too busy to think- or pray- about it. I think God enjoys showing off to me when I least expect it. I checked my Facebook in the morning, like I sometimes always do, and I got an unexpected message from a friend. Her and her husband are also in the midst of the adoption process, have been for awhile. They were working with an agency in the States, but for many reasons had to switch to a Canadian agency. She told me that while they were still with their previous agency they had been fundraising through a group called Ordinary Hero. They had raised $800 with them. She had contacted them to let them know of their agency switch, and because they are not with an agency in the States any more, they were no longer eligible to receive the money.  
So she gave them our names and told them to send the money to our agency instead!
This blew me away!! Completely! I didn't even know what to say. $800 that they worked hard to raise, that they can't use for their adoption, that we get to use for ours. It doesn't seem fair to me, and yet I know this couple. They have huge, generous hearts and it doesn't surprise me in the least that they did this for us. What an incredible blessing!

THEN (if that wasn't enough) tonight I taught piano and one of my piano students came in the door and handed me an envelope. She said it was from her and her mom (who I used to work with at Warman Elementary). I read the note and it was a bunch of change they had collected for our adoption. After lessons were over I counted it up. It was all loonies and toonies and it amounted to $70! So to recap, today alone we received $870 for our adoption- and we didn't do anything!

So yeah...it's been one of those days...and I am thankful. Thankful for good friends with generous hearts and for a God who knows what the future holds and who enjoys showing off to me :)

Fundraising Thermometer

Hey friends!
Just writing a short post about the new feature I put on my blog. It took me FOREVER to figure this out (I'm not very computer-literate), but I added a thermometer to the blog to document our funds as they come in. Nothing too exciting, but it's a tangible way to see how much support we have and how much more is needed!
As always, thanks for the prayers. Keep it up!