Don't run away from hard things!

I think we have hit our stride...at least for now. The newness of everything made the kids extra "special" for the first few weeks, but now they seem to be settling in to routine quite nicely. The honeymoon is over though. They are not scared to tell us exactly how they feel about things, and in turn, we are not scared to tell them exactly how we feel about things. There is lots of learning going on around here...us and them. The good thing is that with every day we grow closer as a family, so the disciplining is starting to come from a loving father and mother and not just from random people...this helps a lot. It has been only 3 weeks and we have a long, long road ahead of us, but I do feel like we have made some serious progress in this short time. I am thankful for so many things, but right now I am ridiculously thankful that Michael and I persevered through some of the hardest moments in our life to get us to this point! "But those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength!" I took the liberty of adding the exclamation point! Thanks be to God!

The most amazing thing I have experienced is how God reminds me every day where I have been. He is making me aware of blessing upon blessing...how he prepared us for what we are doing now. Everything I have done, seen, heard for my whole life is coming back to me and giving me wisdom in parenting...even when I didn't know I was learning, I was totally learning. As I am going through my day I have memories flash in my mind of a conversation with a mom, of watching someone interact with their kid, of a moment with one of my students, a moment with my parents and how I felt. All kinds of things like that. And every time I am thankful for the preparation that God has put me through. Even our time with Jesse and Conner has proved an amazing learning experience for us as parents...God doesn't waste anything. God be with those sweet boys, even when I can not.

This is a hard thing that we are doing, in so many ways. I do wonder why God chose this path for us and them. Why did it have to take this long for me to meet my kids? Why could I not have been given the amazing blessing of cradling these childen as newborn babies? I don't know the answer to all of these questions, but I do trust God. This world is broken...my inability to conceive and their previous circumstance are a great testament to the brokeness of this world, but look what God has done to turn the bad into good....LOOK WHAT GOD HAS DONE!

Hard things that require great sacrifice on our part, when the Lord is in them, will bring great blessings too. If God tells you to do the hard thing, do the hard thing!

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