God's provision

Dave and I have had a strange weekend/week. We had a good time at the Philippine Day, but there were parts of it that overwhelmed us. On Sunday night I was in tears with the thought of all that I DON'T know about the Philippines, and its culture, and how to incorporate it into our life. I also cried thinking that not only do I not know anything about parenting, I also don't know anything about ADOPTIVE parenting. I began having lots of "it's not fair" feelings about it all. My angry thought was that birth parents don't have to go through the stress of learning a new culture. I wanted to be honest in my blogs, so here's my ugly side for you.

I'll admit, even though I love God with all of my heart, I don't go to Him in prayer very often. I tend to (try to) control my life and situations, and not give Him much credit. Well that night I finally decided that I couldn't do this by myself anymore. I needed God's strength and peace. I prayed that night that He would carry me through these kinds of times that are inevitably going to come through the adoption process and parenting. The prayer was more than that, but that was the gist of it.

The next morning I was still pretty on edge. I was frustrated with the fact that I need to get started on a "life book" for our child/ren, because there is no baby book out there that can encompass our unique adoption story. It's kind of like a scrapbook (and those who know me know that I'm far from being a "cropper"). I was frustrated with Dave because I felt like I was the only one of us putting myself out there to find other adoptive families that we could connect with (being an introvert, this is another hard one for me - it's exhausting because I cherish my alone time).

After we got to work and got set up for the day, my dad (and boss) suggested that we go grab some breakfast and talk about what our week looks like. We sat down and he told me he had seen my great aunt Jo that previous weekend and she wanted him to pass a message along to us. She said, "You tell those kids that they are doing a great thing by adopting, and I'm excited for them! You tell them this story: I met a family who had adopted multiple children from the Philippines. Their kids are now teenagers, and I asked them what their favorite thing was that their parents had incorporated into their lives about the Philippines. They told me that incorporating the Philippine culture wasn't what was the best part about their parents. It was that through them they became a family. They loved that their parents tried hard to incorporate the culture into their lives, but they loved being a family even more than all of that".

I sat there and cried as my dad finished telling us about this, and he kind of looked at me questioningly. Dave went on to explain that we had really been struggling with bringing the Philippine culture into our lives, and feeling like failures because we will never know enough. He told my dad that I had prayed specifically about all of this last night, and we were amazed at how God answered that prayer. In fact, God answered that prayer BEFORE I even prayed it. Wow. He's so good to us, when we don't even deserve it!!!!

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Last October our furnace totally went kaput, and we had to get it replaced. Fast forward 5 months to this week...
This week we thought either our water softener or water heater were leaking. Last week the water softener guy came out and replaced a(n expensive) part on the softener. He said that he thought the leak was the water heater. Then on Wednesday of this week, we had a plumber come out to check out our utility room. Sure enough, the water heater was leaking and we had to replace it. POOP. He had planned ahead for just this problem, so he had a water heater in his truck. Later that morning, we had a guy come out to do an estimate on our deck door - we discovered that the temperature next to the door was 50 degrees and we can hear the traffic outside the door like we are sitting outside on the deck. There is no question that this had to be replaced (three years ago, but my nagging didn't have much of an effect on Dave!).

I added up the costs of all of these expenses and discovered something. The expense of all of this equaled the expenses that we have yet to pay if we would adopt 1 child. Nearly exactly the same amount - $5800. Yowsers. Want to hear something funny? I've had this little voice telling me for the past six months or so, "Hey Rachel, depend on Me to get the money for this adoption. Stop fretting about it, and obsessing over it". Well, this forces me to do exactly that. So here we go, God. I'm giving it over to You! I need Your provision, and I truly have faith that You will make this happen. I'm excited to see what kinds of surprises are in store as we practice giving it over to God every minute of every day.

To be more frugal (and perhaps learn to actually cook before we become parents), we have a goal of only eating the food that is in our cupboards for the next 2 weeks. I had to grocery shop last night to pick up 4 necessities, but otherwise I am able to create 9+ recipes out of what we already have. Woot! So you're saying - um, Rachel, 9 meals does not equal 2 weeks. Okay okay, you got me. Some of those evenings are cereal suppers. I just can't get away stop them cold turkey! I love Honey Nut Chee.rios!!!

This picture has nothing at all to do with the post, it's just an old pic of my niece, Grace, that makes me laugh...