My crazy, God ordained, night!

    This week has been one of the toughest weeks since we began our international adoption. Nothing new or upsetting happened but my insides were a swirling mess. I have been feeling so defeated and down cast. I have been begging God to show himself to me because I felt so broken.

    This is what makes what happened tonight such a blessing. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt my God orchestrated every detail of this night to point  us to Himself and His faithfulness.

    I will start at the beginning. This afternoon around 3:00 I talked to Todd and he said he was most likely going to be working late. I decided not to start the dinner I had planned and make sandwiches or something for the girls and I instead. Around 5:00 he called and said plans changed and he was actually going to be home in a few minutes. A few minutes after he walked in the door he received a phone call from a friend of ours. This friend stores some of his things in our barn and wanted to know if we could drop something off to him in the next few minutes. It was kind of an emergency situation and he was not far away. So we all hopped in the car to drive the stuff over to him. Todd made the suggestion that we all eat at a pizza restaurant nearby. We had coupons for buy one get one free meals and would be out anyway.

    Here is the really cool part. We ate our meal at the pizza place and decided to go as a family into the arcade area. We walked into the arcade area and immediately a woman came up to us and commented about my shirt I was wearing. She said, "I have the same t-shirt." The shirt I was wearing was our fundraiser shirts that we sold to raise money for our adoption. I thought it was the coolest thing that someone I did not know had our shirt. So I introduced myself and told her that we were the family that was selling them to raise money for our adoption. She immediately teared up and said, "Oh my, your family has inspired my husband and I to adopt internationally." I was blown away. She shared how her and her husband have one child but have not been able to conceive another and after hearing our story they have decided to adopt internationally. We do not even know them. We continued to talk for a moment and then this is where the story gets even better. A man who was standing nearby with his sons said, "I am sorry to interrupt by I have to, my wife and I are in the process of adopting from Nicaragua. She is there now with our daughter. She has been there for two months. This has been a long process for us but I have to tell you that God cares about orphans. Our God is so faithful." My jaw literally was about to fall on the floor. And all of us continued to talk about how it was not where we had planned to be for dinner that night. But our God, who is faithful, put us all in that spot at that moment. And my heart knows that my God spoke directly to what I needed to hear from Him.

    My God is real! And He is faithful. This journey has been so much harder than I ever dared imagine. But God has been so much more faithful than I ever dreamed He would be.