When I sit down to write in my blog, I usually have been inspired by some amazing experience that God has allowed me to encounter. Tonight......I sit at my desk thinking through the last year and half. I am thankful beyond measure for the blessings, the gifts, the ups and downs and the ROLLER COASTER of a ride our adoption experience took us on for fifteen months. I cannot explain how God showed His power over and over again for His glory! Adoption is a beautiful testimony of God's love for His beloved! I am deeply honored that He would find me worthy of such a calling. I will never forget that He believed in my family and called us to this great purpose. My children are a gift.....each one.....from God.
Tonight, I must tell you a story of a side journey that I have personally experienced this past year. It has taken a while to wrap my mind around the words in my heart and transform them into a post. I haven't been able to share this journey because it is so personal and so difficult to put into words. I found a quote tonight that summed up the feelings that I have held in my heart since last May. Helen Keller has a way with words......and tonight those words expressed the exact feeling that God knew I held inside.
"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us." Helen Keller
Mike and I not only took a journey through adoption, but we also stepped out in faith last May and made the decision for me to stay home and be a full time mother. Wow....what a leap. I had been a teacher at my children's Christian school for 7 years and was currently serving as the school counselor in the upper school. We had just arrived home with our boys in April and Mike and I knew that our family would need so much support with all the new transitions. After much prayer. we decided that we would home school our children. I began to plan for this new life that lay ahead for me and my precious babies. We knew that we still had a few trips to Latvia ahead of us and that we would have to plan for the times that we would be away. During the first few weeks of summer.....my heart began to question....to doubt.....to wonder......to FEAR what was ahead. Now mind you.....I am an educator....holding a masters degree in education....., but now experiencing great fear in teaching my own children. Although, I had taught both girls during their third grade year. It was in this time of fear....or maybe exhaustion that I decided to enroll the children in school. I justified that it was because we would be out of the country for several weeks. When that would no longer satisfy my need to justify this action.....I would question their opportunities.....their social life with friends.....their computer skills. I looked for every excuse....justification......reason why I should not listen to this call that God was placing on my life. So......without looking back.......I enrolled them and sat down to what we call in the south "waller" in my own self pity! At the time, I was nursing some hurt feelings......recovering from extreme exhaustion from the adoption paperwork and a long visit to a foreign country and planning two additional trips to Latvia. Along with teaching English......and filling in many gaps in the education of my new sons. My sweet children with excitement on their faces began their new journey with a fresh book bag.....clothes (not uniforms as before) and anticipation for a new start. Now, these kids had always been in a very small environment in which they were nurtured and fed the word of the Lord daily. It was a loving environment in which I am now proud to say prepared them educationally for what they were about to experience! Academically, they soared! The first semester was amazing and I could not have asked for more from any of these awesome kids. It was during Christmas break that God began to really open my heart to reveal to me my disobedience to His call for our family. It was during this close family time that I witnessed a loving bond that my family was sharing....the slower pace....the time to laugh and to make memories. The time to be angry and forgive.....moments that a family needs to grow together. It was in that moment, I knew I had not listened to his call. So....right there.....I realized that I was staring at a closed door....(maybe even mourning the loss of it) and forgetting to look at the one God had opened! I knew my family needed to come home and that God would provide everything that was needed to cover those fears....doubts.....and worries about my inadequacies. The girls are home and school is going very well.....I am in great prayer about my youngest son (for next school year)......., but God will show me the way. I must trust in Him to pave the road.
Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths......Proverbs 3:5-6
