I wouldn't have asked for this.....

This post really starts last summer, when we began praying about starting a family.  I feel like it came full circle yesterday as I was sitting in church listening to the sermon.  God's plan for our lives is SO much greater than anything we could ever imagine!!  When we began praying about starting a family, most of our prayers consisted of asking God to bless us with a baby, a baby that would come from the two of us.  We weren't really thinking about adoption at that point in time.  We have said in other posts that we always thought adoption would come after we had biological children, so for me at least, adoption was an afterthought.  And then our church started an orphan care ministry, and lots of families started the adoption process.  We heard many sermons preached about adoption and how it is such an awesome display of the Gospel.  Our hearts began to turn towards adoption and we began considering it as an option for us NOW.  And we all know how that turned out, about five months ago we began this amazing journey to our child in Ethiopia.

And then yesterday, sitting in a sermon about prayer, our pastor said something that really struck me.  He was talking about how we pray, and that sometimes we don't get the results we expect, but we still pray, because God is our Father and he wants to bless his children.  This was the statement that got me, "God sometimes answers our prayers by giving us what we would have asked for had we known what he knows."  That was it.  Doesn't sound so profound, but I started thinking back to last summer.  Back then, I wouldn't have asked for this adoption journey.  I wouldn't have asked for all the paperwork, waiting, fund raising, heartache, frustration.  I would have rather just had it the "easy" way.  You know, nine months and you have a baby way.  But then I would have missed the beauty of this journey.  I would have missed growing my faith by leaps and bounds, I would have missed seeing God work time and time again throughout this process to provide for our family.  I would have missed all the blessings along the way, and we don't even have our baby yet.  I can only imagine how much more this is going to sink in once we see that precious face, and know this will all be worth it.  It already is.  I might not have asked for this back then, but this is definitely the answer for our family.  I have seen a piece of God's heart through this, and we now know a tiny fraction of what he knows.  This may not be the answer I was expecting, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.  We already love this baby SO much, and cannot wait to have him/her in our arms!  I may not have asked for this then, but knowing what I know now, I would do it all over again.

"If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?" Luke 11:13