The extraordinary ordinary day

Some days are just ordinary days until something spectacular happens and turns them into extraordinary days. Today was one of those days.

Most of today was filled with laundry, dishes, more laundry, more dishes, and trying to referee toy disputes. Cheerios were thrown on the floor, Nathan and Zoe giggled together and then screeched at each other, and the dog wanted to go in and out repeatedly. All part of an ordinary day at our house.

But around 3 p.m. our ordinary day turned extraordinary--today we received “the” call. The call saying an expectant mother in Florida would love for us to parent her child. The call revealing the expectant mom and baby we've been praying for for two years now. The call saying “you're matched!”

Instead of many words to share, we only have an overwhelming flood of excitement, peace, and sense of God's direction in a passion He placed in our hearts two years ago. For tonight, we'll simply say, “We're matched! We'll be adopting a baby boy in December.”

:-)

Adoption Fund= 100 PERCENT!!!!

Well, today's the day we've waited for for a LONG (long, long) time--our adoption fund is 100 percent funded! Our little house closed at 11:45 this morning, and we were able to transfer the funds immediately into our adoption account, bringing us to a grand total of OVER $30,000 available for our adoption. With this sale, the actual adoption costs as well as travel costs should be fully covered. We are so thankful that the Lord helped us pay off our little house early and also prevented us from selling it when we first moved out of it three years ago, as He had not yet called us to pursue adoption at that time. God's timing in prompting us to sell and in locating a buyer (just FIVE DAYS after listing it for sale) has been amazing as we're exactly at the point of needing our funds immediately upon getting a call for a placement.

Please pray with us in these coming days, weeks, months--???--we have no idea on a time frame, as we'll be in the presenting stage until we are matched with an expectant mom. Pray that we'll have patience and peace as we'll likely be presenting frequently. One big reason we chose to work with Christian Adoption Consultants is because they have contact with agencies across the country that have a great need for adoptive families. We have already had opportunity to present our family profile to several expectant mothers in just the past week, so your prayers are coveted as we wait to find out the child God would have for our family.

As you pray, please also join us in praying for the expectant moms who are choosing families to parent their children. Each time we receive information on an adoption situation, there is always a story. Always brokenness, pain, strained relationships, strongholds of addiction, or hopelessness. Please pray for these women who are making such a great choice for their babies to give them life and hope through adoption. Pray for people to come into their lives and share Christ's love and hope with them in the midst of their difficult life circumstances. Our hearts break reading these women's stories, and we pray they will find hope, grace, and freedom in Christ.

Thank you for partnering with us financially and in prayer on this adoption journey! We thank God for each of you!

July 2014

Since 2010, every July something eventful happens in our lives. July 2010 brought about job change, a move, and a discovery we were expecting Nathan. July 2011 was the least eventful year as we were "just" adjusting to life as first-time parents. Then, after praying for months about adoption, we felt the Lord clearly calling us to pursue domestic adoption on July 14, 2012. On July 15, 2013, Isaiah James Cromer was born and adopted by our great friends Nathan and Kimberly. Isaiah is such a joy to his family and friends!

Now it is July 2014. Every July I get excited and anxious for what's going to happen this year :-). With our home study complete, we have been sending applications to adoption agencies and attorneys with the assistance of our adoption consultant. This week we started to get our first calls about presenting to situations. For those not familiar with domestic (U.S.) adoption, "presenting" is kind of like the interview stage of applying for a job. Any time we are presented, that means our family's profile is shared and discussed with an expectant mother looking for a family for her child. The next part of the journey is called a "match," which means an expectant mother will choose us to parent her baby. These first days in the presenting stage have been exciting to us as we not only wait for a child who needs us to be his/her family but also hear of other families being formed through the blessing of adoption! We praise God each time we hear of a successful match being made as we know one more little one is being given life and hope!

This July is also bringing another HUGE exciting event in our adoption journey--our little house is going to CLOSE this coming Tuesday, July 22!!! We are so thrilled about this as once our house sale is complete, our adoption fund will also be FULL! After Tuesday, we should be financially ready to say "yes" to nearly any situation. We are so excited and praising the Lord for His awesome orchestration of this sale--the house was just 5 days on the market before we received an offer that we accepted.

As you think of us, please pray for our family being presented in the coming weeks and months. We will not be posting each time we will be presented, but just know we will likely be presented often until we are matched. We have been blessed to have an adoption consultant helping us navigate the waters as well as such a great network of adoptive families here in our local area who have been great encouragement! Thanks to all of you who have been praying with us on this journey. We're 2 years and 3 days in, and we're so excited for what the Lord is preparing us for! 

Quick Family Update

With two active little ones, we hardly have time to sit down long enough to write blog posts these days, but we definitely wanted to post a family update soon as many of you are probably wondering where things are with our adoption. I think I'll just keep this to bullet points since both my kids are supposed to be napping (but aren't) :-)

1) We are in the middle of our home study update. It is supposed to be written this week, which means it will be finished THIS MONTH!!! This is big news :-)

2) For those who haven't seen our Facebook updates, we are so very close to fully funded, pending the sale of our little home that we've been renting out for the past several years! We have a purchase agreement and are waiting on the financing and closing details to come together. We thank those of you who've helped us financially prepare for the coming of this little one into our family! We knew God would have to divinely provide funding for His calling to come to fruition, and He has continually amazed us in this area as we've had little energy for "fundraising," yet funds have been coming in continually. Please pray with us that the sale of our home would come through as expected so that our funding will be in order soon!

3) What's next? We will be applying to agencies that have been recommended by our adoption consultant and wait to be matched with a expectant mom. Please pray with us as we wait for the match the Lord has in store for us!

4) Please pray specifically with us for travel plans, as we could need to pack up to travel quickly to anywhere in the U.S. at any time. We are praying for wisdom in either traveling with our two little ones or having them spend some time with family or friends.

THANK YOU for your prayers for our family in this journey! We have learned so much about the Lord this past year and have been amazed at His provision and His guidance in this process. We're excited to see what He has planned for our family!

-Mae

Full Steam Ahead!

 It's here--finally--the end of March 2014. Zoe has just turned 9 months old, and we are officially able to update our home study!!!! We are so, so excited about this and are about 2/3 of the way through our paperwork already! Appointments have been just falling into place, and we will likely be done with everything but our home visit by next week.

We have learned so much about the Lord and seeking HIM instead of just His plans, and we desire to keep seeking Him as our focus moving forward. As we've been seeking Him, we have sensed lately that He's telling us to "get ready and buckle our seat belts" for His adoption plans for our family. He's confirmed repeatedly that we are to continue pursuing adoption, so here we are, filling out more financial profiles, background checks, and physical forms.

Please pray with us as, of course, our enemy Satan does NOT wish us to continue these plans. Our home has become a war zone recently, with spiritual attacks coming in the form of doubt, discouragement, despair, and anxiety. We've faced and are facing some major changes in our lives this year, and Satan has been working diligently on our family, trying to distract us from focusing on Christ above all else. Pray that we will NOT lose sight of our Lord as "life" happens around us.

The Lord has blessed us financially as we near adoption time, and we are thrilled that a large chunk of the finances could be covered even today. Please pray with us moving forward for the remaining balance to be raised in God's perfect timing! We have been feeling like it's time to sell our small little house that we've been renting out for the past few years, so we are praying that a quick sale may fill in the financial gap.

God is good! We have waited (mostly impatiently) for this time to be able to "do" something again. Through our impatience though, God has shown us how to trust Him more deeply, rest in His presence, and experience His peace, and we wouldn't trade those valuable spiritual lessons for anything. May His name be praised!

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

The Good (no, downright awesome!)
Well, since I've posted, we have SO much to praise the Lord for in our home! First, Daniel has secured full-time work--working from home as an independent contractor for a digital asset management group (yeah, I didn't know what that meant either). He is now working out of his new bedroom office, with frequent unexpected visits from a certain little boy who finds sneaky ways to visit Daddy "at work!" The Lord could not have orchestrated this any more beautifully. Daniel's severance pay from his former employment finished up on March 6. That same day, we received our tax return in the bank, and the next day he received a full time job offer. The Lord is so good!

Also with this job comes enough income to more speedily grow our adoption fund. While we are so tired at the end of every day with two energetic little ones, we are so excited to keep following the Lord's leading into adoption! We will be able to start our home study update at the end of March, so we hope to add to our family even this year through adoption!

The Bad
Winter. Winter is, as my grandpa says, full of dirty, filthy, rotten snow. Daniel calls it dirty winter. And so it is. Our family has been sick for about 2 of the last 3 months. We are SOOOO ready for spring and health! Anyone with us?

The Ugly
Parenting. Sometimes parenting small children is simply downright ugly. This week has been filled with WAY too many explosive diapers, cups full of juice thrown at baby sister, unending whining, and a tornado wrecking our house (wait, I think Nathan was actually in the middle of that blur). When mammas don't lean on Jesus' strength, it becomes even uglier! In moments when I throw myself desperately into His presence, the Lord has been encouraging me to find rest in Him and experience His peace in these crazy days. I'm so thankful for my Savior who does provide strength and endurance when every ounce of me is downright exhausted.

Please pray for us as we continue seeking the Lord as a family! Pray that Satan will not have victory in discouraging us or causing us to feel defeat as parents. Pray that we will always fall on our knees in the Lord's presence and seek His strength, not rely on our own limited strength. May the Lord's peace rest on each of you as you seek Him above all else!

Snow days, rest, and adoption

Well I haven't blogged in over a month, mostly because our family has been sick, traveling, and busy shuttling around town for this, that, and the other thing. Getting the kids bundled up and in and out of the minivan in the winter is a chore that I'm not a fan of, so these past few weeks as we've had snow, ice, and more snow, I've been so thankful for some time to breathe and load up the minivan a few less times on snow days. (Oh yes, and there is also the 7-month-old Miss Zoe who hates sleeping; thus the lack of blog posts :-).)

As many of you know, this past Friday, we were forced into a time of rest we were not anticipating. Daniel was called into his boss's office and told his position was being eliminated immediately; he could spend the day how he wished and head home as soon as he wanted. I distinctly remember just a few months back sharing with some friends in my MOMS group at church how blessed we felt with his employment; a steady, secure job that was more than providing our family and allowing us to work financially toward our call to adopt. The Lord has provided nearly $11,000 toward our upcoming adoption costs, and we can't stop thanking Him for continuing to bring in funds when we had no physical ability to do the hard fundraising work (did I mention that sweet baby girl who hates sleeping?)

So when we heard the news of Daniel's immediate layoff, we were definitely surprised. We were disappointed in the loss of a job he enjoyed that was "providing" for us. But we also felt overwhelmed in our spirits with peace that ultimately the Lord is our Provider and has definitely been with us to this point and also knows what He has planned for us next! We have felt extremely blessed with a network of friends and family who've immediately set to work helping us find connections, and we've been relieved to have been working hard on Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace Baby Steps for the past five years (seriously--if you don't know who Dave Ramsey is or what the baby steps are, go here and start NOW!)

With this recent job loss combined with several snow days and cancelled events, we have had time to slow down, enjoy relationships in our lives, and seek the Lord more diligently. As we've prayed and sought direction, one thing continues to burn in our hearts--a clear call to pursue adoption and care of children in crisis. We started this blog nearly two years ago for the purpose of updating you on our adoption journey, and the Lord has reaffirmed that call in our hearts yet again over the past few weeks. In fact, last Sunday the Brookhaven missions month keynote speaker Dennis Wright spoke on the impending need to reach the unreached people around the world with the great truth of Christ. Miss Zoe was not cooperating that day, so I had to keep her with me in service and had to leave halfway through the message. While holding her in my arms in a side room and listening to Dennis speak, the Lord impressed upon my heart yet again, "Your family is to reach the unreached children--those with no one to love them, those who have no one to speak My name and My love into their lives. Welcome them into your home. Be their mommy and daddy as I am your Daddy. Teach them to know My name."

Since Zoe's birth we have wrestled with exhaustion and a feeling of "crazy" in our lives, stemming from sleepless nights, lots of activities, and a full work schedule. This month we've had time to enjoy the snow and rest. We are so thankful the Lord continues to speak truth and purpose into our hearts when we are quiet in His presence. We can't wait for the end of March when Zoe turns 9 months old and we will be allowed to update our home study again and see what the Lord has in mind for our family as we actively pursue adoption again! Please pray with us as we wait for employment to open up, and rejoice with us at the Lord's extreme blessings in both the calm AND the storms of life!