I’m full of lots of lots of thoughts these past few days. This post may be long so you just might want to grab your cup of tea and nice chair to sit in while you read. I’ve a favor to ask but first I must tell you what is on my heart.
The journey through adoption can be one of the most emotional journeys one will ever take. We definitely have been through the process numerous times and every time I hope that this time “it just might be easier and straight forward with no glitches, and no stress.” LOL! Not so! It is such a roller coaster of everything; your emotions, your finances, and your physical being experiences stress. Most of the time, there is no “definite” in the process. There are horrific moments and there are ecstatic moments all along the way. There are busy moments of movement with news reports, appointments and deadlines then comes the silence, the waiting. It can be exhausting mentally, physically, emotionally and even spiritually.
Adoption certainly grows you, if you let it. On the other hand it can also kill you, if you let it.
There are many times, when we have felt like we have been thrown at the enemies feet. The one who doesn't want good to happen in the world. The one who is out to destroy hope in others.
Sometimes it’s as if we can literally feel him laugh and mock us for attempting to save the life of a child. Road blocks get thrown in our way that utterly tempt us to quit. I am often reminded of the travails of Pilgrim in Pilgrim’s Progress as we experience this journey. We run into trouble after trouble but God is always there to help in the most unexpected ways when needed.
Through this process during and after, we have learned a highly valuable truth. That is nothing ever exhaust Jesus.
We choose to be the tree planted by the River. He is the River. He calms the storms, he brings the lonely to rest in our haven. He gives the strength. We cannot do this in and of ourselves. His name is Hope inside of us. His love always finds us.
I never have doubted that God would provide for us in every capacity when he called us to pursue one of our children. I always kept Hope like it was a treasure. As a child, I memorized both Hebrews 11 and Romans 8. They came to be my promises when hard moments arose in the adoption process. I love the quote by William Wilberforce - a great man who led the fight to abolish slavery- “We are too young to realize that certain things are impossible... So we will do them anyway.” This is our heart and brings us to the favor we need of you.
As you know, we are in process of adopting a little boy, J.from _______ and our daughter M______ also from ______, who has lived with us for over 2 years now. We have been pursuing both of their adoptions for over 2 years now. It has been complicated due to many special and unexpected circumstances. (You can read most of the details on our private FB group- (Just let me know you want to Join)
After a long time when it seemed nothing was happening, we suddenly had pathways opened to go forward in these adoptions. (Some literal miracles have taken place)
A few weeks ago, we completed our home study and it was taken to our attorney in the country we are adopting from. We have been waiting for a few weeks to hear what is going on with our cases. We felt confident that guardianships would continue for our adoptions as usual. We stepped into this totally unprepared financially. It definitely was a huge step of faith to keep going towards these adoptions even after we committed to being caretakers to two other international teens from a disrupted adoption this past December but we trusted God as we have seen him continuously use various means to provide for each of our past adoptions. He’s always been faithful.
THE BIG NEWS!
We found out a couple of days ago that the government that we are adopting from wants to halt adoptions and we have so many days to get a court date and obtain it. This seems like an impossibility. But we are believing that with God, Nothing is Impossible.
Our attorney is working on getting us a court date and hopefully we will know this next week if we got one.
Suddenly, we have a lot to be done to be prepared for this- plane tickets, lawyer fees, travel expenses, adoption fees.
I’m getting to the favor need from you but first I need to explain something that has transpired over the last few days, then you will understand the favor.
Duane has been reading this book and he was so moved by a certain part of it yesterday that he had to share with me. In summary, the author shared about a hard time she had been experiencing and she was just at the end of her strength through the situation that had been happening. Her friend asked her if she had talked to God about it. She had in a sense been asking God to give her strength to go through the situation but had not asked him to resolve the situation. Her friend, told her it was ok to write a petition to God about resolving the situation. Her reasoning was because we are a part of the Kingdom of God, we most certainly can petition God about those things that need resolution. He is concerned with peace and love existing. It is already his will that these things be done. So she did what her friend told her. She wrote a letter to God, signed it and then had her friend sign and for over an hour, they named friends who they knew would agree and align as allies with them and imagined them signing it as well. God heard her and Heaven was moved about her situation. Amazingly, it was resolved immediately that same day because it aligned with His purposes.
In the meantime, without knowing he had been reading this, I went on a FB group that I haven’t been to in a while called Creating with God in Life and Business and the admin on there had posted about how she loves to write letters to God as a form of prayer and she posted a prayer and asked others to pray as well and to agree together on it. This struck me as maybe, I need to just write a letter to God about our kids and share it with others to agree with us on it.
Duane couldn’t get the story off of his mind and finally shared it with me, I knew immediately that it was no coincidence that we both had been shown a piece of God’s direction. We were to write a letter of request to Heaven and put it out there for our family and friends and their family and friends & anyone else who agrees with our hearts to sign, like or agree. We believe Heaven is moved when the collective goodwill of so many is moved.
Our Petition:
Dear Creator God,
You have created us in your image, You have covered us in the shadow of your wings, we have invited Christ to live in us and we have chosen to live in Him. As a family, we the Carters, come before you in your Presence. You have always been where we are whether it has been a high place or a low place. Just like David we have felt the days of Heaven where we have clear vision and have felt you around us, supporting us, aiding us, comforting us. We thank you for that. We have experienced the days where we have felt as if we had made our bed in hell, wavering in our faith, almost losing hope but you would be there keeping us, holding us, hiding us, loving us. We thank you for that.
You have put our family together in the most amazing ways. We still stand amazed at the ways you worked in our lives, at the ways you brought each of our children to us. We fill with emotion at the ways you provided for us and the ways that you healed our hearts and our kids’ hearts and are continuing to do so. We stand speechless in worship at the ways you returned hope back to our children and ourselves. We lift our highest praise to you.
Because we know that these problems we are experiencing concerning the completion of your heart’s desire to set the lonely in families, to call our sons and daughters from afar and to not leave the children as orphans, are not your will, we ask you to mightily intervene on our behalf. Our family longs to bring J. home and be his family. Our family longs for M. to have finalization in her place in our family.
It appears that certain govt. officials in this beautiful country are being influenced by those who do not have your interest at heart. These are people interrupting a beautiful thing you created- family. They are to stopping adoptions. They think they have won by denying children a permanent family. We ask you to intervene on our kids’ and others behalf in this adoption process.
We long for our kids to be home with us. We know you care about the outcome. We know you will not accept our “yes” to you and deny its fulfillment. You have always been faithful. We remember and have seen you intervene in the past when we were told that our daughters could never leave Romania, that adoptions were indefinitely halted. We have watched you move mountains. We are deeply grateful. Our faith is strong because you have proven faithful to us.
We ask that you release everything we need to complete these adoptions. Whether it be yeses, signatures, paperwork, finances or favor. Just as the Egyptians threw their wealth at the Hebrews, and freed them with favor, we ask that you once again cause extravagance given to our cause.
We know you also want our kids to live in a safe place, in a place we call home. We ask that our house be given to us in a simplistic way. We ask for favor and for provision, for creativity to flow through our home.
We thank you for these amazing miracles we are about to see. We are excited that we will be officially able to call J. a son and that never again will he be called an orphan. We are excited that M. will get to add the last name Carter to her name and officially be our daughter.
God, because Heaven’s heart is moved when there is a “cloud of witnesses, we are inviting others to join and partner with us in agreement that our son will come home, and our daughter will officially be ours with no worries as to how it will be paid for or how it will happen. Thank you. We love you. You are worthy of our praise.
Lovingly we sign with our hearts,
Melissa, Duane, Graham, Andrew, Stephen, Derick, Allenni, Eli, Isaiah and Maria
THE FAVOR we ask of you:
This may seem a little outside the box. A different way of doing things. We have friends all over the world and we have been calling out people’s names who we know will stand with us. Our kids all stood with us for their sister and new brother, calling our people who they thought would also agree to having a child be released into our family.
If you agree with what we are going after for our family and you want to be our “cloud of witnesses” will you sign your name in the comments or agree verbally as a prayer for us? Will you share with people who you know would agree with us in this? It is a spiritual petition. There is no commitment of anything but to feel in your heart and say with your lips that you agree that our children should be freed. Spoken words are very powerful. We know Heaven will be delighted when it hears the voices of all of those who all gathered in unity to over the one and in our case the two. It inadvertently will affect many more. We so appreciate you and your partnership with us. We are excited about what God is doing! Much love, Melissa and Duane and kids
