This past week, I've been reflecting a lot on what the Lord has done in this past year. This year has been marked with the unexpected and unplanned as the Lord continually destroys our limited vision of what we THINK His plans are and blows us away with what He really has planned.
Last July was a significant month for our family. One year ago on July 14, we went to the first Embrace orphan care picnic. While there, we learned about a need for families to adopt minority newborns in the U.S. due to an increase in women choosing life for their little ones yet having to watch their babies enter straight into the foster care system. I vividly remember Jade Metz telling our family, Nathan and Kimberly Cromer, and several others about this need and feeling an unexpected immediate call to act. Daniel felt immediately compelled as well, and our adoption journey unfolded. That day I also distinctly remember walking to the snack shop at the park with Kimberly, talking about what we'd just heard and discussing why the Lord sometimes calls us to act and sometimes clearly asks us to "wait." At the time, she was being asked to wait.
The most interesting thing I'm learning about the Lord in this adoption journey is that sometimes His call to follow a certain leading does not look a thing like we expected, and His purpose for calling us to a certain thing is not always the end result but the process of learning about Him in the process. Just three months after we started our adoption journey, we discovered we were pregnant with Zoe. Thinking we knew the Lord's plan for our family (to adopt a little one within a year), we had not "planned" for Zoe to enter the picture! But as you know from reading my blog this year, the Lord has taken me through some serious conversations with Him regarding trust, His plans, His timing, and simply resting in Him and continuing to pursue Him, while letting Him work out the details of the call He's put on our hearts. So, this June, instead of completing "our" plan of a one-year adoption, we welcomed little Zoe Grace into the world. We chose her name based on its meaning of "eternal life given in God's favor," marking a significant milestone in our understanding of Who the Lord is and how beautifully He engages in our lives.
Zoe Grace was not the only beautifully created life in His plans for this year. Last week on July 15 (a year and one day after the picnic), Nathan and Kimberly met their newborn adopted son, Isaiah James. Today they are travelling back home with Isaiah as proud new parents, likely exhausted from newborn midnight partying but beaming from ear to ear each time they snuggle him close. My heart has been exploding with joy for these two ever since hearing the news of this adoption that only God could have arranged. Our friends have been praying for years that the Lord would open the door to having children become a part of their family, and they have so faithfully followed God's call to "wait" as well as His call to become foster parents, becoming parents to six children over the past year who have been blessed to enter their home. Their obedience to the Lord has been amazing, and we are praising the Lord again and again for blessing them with little Isaiah and answering their prayers!
This truly has been a year of the Lord weaving beautifully unplanned and unexpected adventures into our lives, and we praise God for all He has done and for Who He is! May His name continue to be lifted high.
