Rejoicing in His Nearness

"Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning." Psalm 30:5

Friends, we are rejoicing!  A beautiful woman in Florida has chosen us to be the family for her baby girl.  But the most amazing part of the story is that the Lord was already doing a mighty work on my heart even before he made my "dreams" come true...

Let me back up.

The 2 weeks leading up to the phone call we had been praying about, I was feeling the Lord drawing nearer and nearer to my heart...  

• Consistently I noticed when I spent time reading my Bible I felt him meeting me there, teaching me about himself and his faithfulness... (that doesn't always happen to me).

• One evening Niles and I had an incredibly worshipful experience at a Bethel concert. We felt the Lord's presence and his love almost tangibly that night even when our hearts were heavy and distracted when the evening began.  One song in particular touched my heart entitled Show me Your Face LORD.  The last line of the song said "I could make it to the end if I could just see your face"... I realized then that that was something I was longing for- just to see God's face in all that was happening...

• I also began to feel a "lightness" that was returning... God was healing my broken heart and I only began to notice it when things "didn't" happen... for example when I didn't tear up when I saw a baby girl or when I didn't  feel sad and sorry for myself when I walked by our nursery... or when I didn't fall completely apart when I heard a fellow adoptive mommy was matched with a baby girl after a relatively "short wait" (note- there were tears, but much less than one might expect!)

• And then I noticed that my excitement for the baby God would bring us returned- it felt possible again that our Ruthie would come home one day and my strength to move forward and "do" what I could was renewed...

• And then I realized that even in my grief and weakness over the last month God was giving me daily doses of faith and restoring my trust in Him!  Praise Him for his gift of FAITH!

I say these things not to say that I was doing anything worthy of praise... God did all the work!  (I just put one foot in front of the other and survived).   I point out the events of the last two weeks to say that now I see that God, in His great mercy and in His perfect timing, has worked all things together for my good (Romans 8:28).

... even before I received the call that would make my dreams of a baby girl come true my GOD gave me what HE KNEW I really wanted most... I wanted to be near Him and He has given me the desire of my heart.

And now he has blessed us even more abundantly with the news that we will be the parents of a precious baby girl!  We couldn't possibly be more excited.

More on that story to come :).

For now, I ask that you pray for our most precious new friend, "B", and the baby girl she is carrying that we hope will be our Ruthie.

 May the Lord shelter them and give them peace.

 Amen.