The little engine with a big God

I haven't blogged to much lately. I know it's not like you've been biting your nails in anticipation or anything. But one of the reasons I have been at a distance is the intense busyness we've had around here. I've taken to watching a beautiful 7 month old bundle of joy a few days a week for a friend, along with homeschool, regular life,new puppy, starting up Haiti(love) stuff (starting a non profit is really just like starting a God- sized business. Yikes!) and adoption stuff.

Along with this Haiti(love) and adoption fever comes discouragement at times.

To put it plainly, all of this is God's stuff. It's HIS thing. We're on HIS plan, in HIS hands...simply obeying HIM.

But along the way of obedience, I find myself stopping and looking around, checking out the sites. And I realize that I feel a bit like a wimpy Israelite marching to war with the Philistines. As I stand there in the midst of all the noise and impossibilities, I'm faced with a couple of options.

1) I can see the "giant" and simply know that my" Dad is bigger than your Dad," and keep walking, in obedience, knowing my Dad also loves me infinitely and the path he leads me on is motivated by both power and love.

So I'm good.

2)As I fervently march on, I forget bit by bit that this is God's thing and it becomes little bit by little bit "my thing", so I become "the little engine that could." The little pathetic engine against the big mountain.

"I think I can."

"I think I can."

please.

I can't.

HE CAN.

3)Stop marching. Turn around. Go home. To a place much easier, where you can hide away in simplicity and hope you never have to do anything really hard again, because quite frankly I'm a little sick of being so familiar with my inadequacies.

As you may guess, I do all of these here and there but #2 is a personal favorite.

Especially on the adoption front, I've grown quite discouraged recently.

How will we ever raise $20,000 on top of all of the other ways we are trying to get people involved in Haiti? And meanwhile, my babies are sick, blind, and without enough food to be healthy.

You can see how easy it is to focus on my inabilities and forget God's abilities.

Honestly, none of my arguments matter in light of the reality that my children are his children and His resources are endless though mine are so limited.

A mother's heart drives her to bang on doors and knock down obstacles to do ANYTHING to help her children.

But what about when you feel like you've been banging and knocking and you still have so far to go and so little perseverance?

Then you feel like a bad mom.

And you just wish God would do this thing and get you out of this vulnerable, pressing situation.

If you guys wouldn't mind praying for this weary cheerleader.

Pray mostly that I will, in all of my marching and fist pumping, rest in God and know that I do what I do out of obedience to God but not because he needs me or my fundraising or my strengths, or my weaknesses. He just loves me enough to involve me in what He's doing.

What He's doing.

Got.To.Remember.

And so life marches on.

with...

Sundaes and cousins

School

Nurses

(We LOVE her. She's taken care of our baby for 2 years now, while he sleeps in the night, allowing us to sleep in the night. She's from Africa and was showing me how to sling a baby to your back with...a towel...it was what we had)

New glasses

New puppies (harder than new children, I am convinced)

New Birthdays (Haddon turned 4!)

Painting kitchen's

Trips to Museum's

Exploring

Learning

(Shep has taken to stealing the nursing gloves and trying to suction himself)

And receiving 30 pounds of coffee to sale to raise money for the adoption...

not like God needs it;)....

but it happens to be the best coffee I've ever had AND $5 from each bag goes directly to our adoption.

Have I said that before?

We were excited.

And just for a quick update on the adoption...

We are pursuing the adoption 2 ways.

1) Raise $20,000 (this includes travel and paperwork and processing the adoption for both Haiti and US). Once the money is raised we can process the adoption in country in a matter of days and bring our babies home.

2)Find a hospital and surgeon willing to care for M&M's eyes and receive a medical visa to bring them here. Once they are here, our hope is that we could process the adoption from the US. We will still need to raise the same amount of funds because they are literally all administrative costs.

We are pursuing both of these options. We currently have everything BUT the hospital commitment to get a medical visa. It's turned out to be super hard to get in touch with the right folks to get a commitment. IF they do commit to help, they may also require we pay out of pocket for their care before writing up a letter to permit a visa. In that case, we will need to raise the funds for their care.

Meanwhile, we continue to try and raise the funds for the adoption through any way we can think of.

But seeing as my brain is in semi-meltdown phase right now....blah.

That pretty much covers it!

I know I haven't always been completely clear on everything that's going on, so please feel free to ask questions.

I really am just running on fumes over here.

Just trying to actually figure this out, much less writing about it, so forgive me.