Do you ever feel like life is just one trial right after another?

If you already feel down today don't read this post.

It started with Faith in the ER last Sunday with severe abdominal pain. Although we are hopeful and at this point think that the pain and the fever were just some weird coincidence it just didn't start the week off well. Then as we were in the ER thinking about having an appendix removed I started thinking about Joshua and Joy's birth parents and the relinquishment decisions they have made. What if I was sitting in the hospital or our home or wherever and my choices were give my child a chance at life by relinquishing my rights to parent her or allow her to die? Like I said our situation turned out well but others' in the world don't. Even if she would have had to receive medical care and immediate surgery we would have found a way to pay for it. Others in the world can't. And some of those people are now my extended family through adoption of children we share.

Then on Friday some of our friends had the worst thing on this earth happen to them. Their 2 month old baby went to heaven. He had been born early, spent about 2 weeks in the hospital, and had been home and was doing fine. How does one put ones mind around the goodness and love of God and the death of ones child? All week long of course I have been grieving and praying and loving this family.

Then yesterday I am sitting in the parking lot of the health department waiting for Grace and Faith's typhoid shot appointment. Their last shot for traveling to China with us and our agency calls. After a week of feeling just uncertain of whether of not the U.S. Consulate had the paperwork it was supposed to have. That I attribute to the Holy Spirit and the fact that our agency couldn't tell us exactly what date it had been taken there but were trying to find out from the person that handles that in Guangzhou. Our agency though had assured us that it was taken last week, just unsure of whether it was Monday or Thursday. They feel bad of course and had every right to assume it was taken when it arrived. That is what our agency had told them to do. Now we are trying to put that miscommunication behind us and per an email I put into the Consulate our paperwork is now there, March 11th. It is frustrating and disheartening that it could have been there on March 1st. But there again we know that our steps are ordered by the Lord. He could have gotten our paperwork there last week but He didn't.... And yes it is hard to process but all along I have prayed that He and He alone would order our steps as to the timing of our trip to Joy MenQian becoming our daughter. I pray she is being well cared for and yet I read horror stories about what orphans have to endure around the world. Those stories for her will I'm sure be told as the years progress. I'm just hoping that waiting two extra weeks......... Lord please care for her and help us to just live life well and faithfully until we get to meet her.

A friend I was venting to sent me this verse to claim for Joy MenQian......
Psalm 139:11-12

Even there Your hand will guide me, Your hand will hold me fast. If I say, Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me, Even the darkness will not be dark to You; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to You.

Another verse that is comforting is....

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5,6

I asked God this morning to allow us to see those straight paths from this paperwork error and am hopeful He will one day soon. His purposes have prevailed in our lives thus far and I know and trust that they will continue to in this adoption journey as well. So now we continue to live and wait... just a little longer. It is looking like the end of April instead of beginning. The pros are that our school year will be even closer to over and there were some things pertaining to school that Grace and Faith were going to miss in the middle of April that now they will be able to be a part of.

So the purpose of this post was for my own sanity and my own working through the mysteries of God and His ways. I can tell you this that the "peace of God that surpasses all understanding" (Phil. 4:7) is what carries us and those around us through the darkest of valleys on this earth. It makes us look forward to eternal life in heaven all the more.