Three short weeks

Well, I realized today that I've only been back for three weeks, yet I only have three weeks left until I'll be officially back to work.  This has been an amazing summer, but definitely not one that I could call restful.  I am hoping that doesn't come back to bite me half-way through the school year.  Who knows?  I might just find myself back in Colombia sooner than I think.

As I look back over the last three weeks, I am absolutely amazed at what God has opened the doors for us to accomplish.  In these 21 days, our adoption case was reopened, we reconnected with our agency, we found, scheduled, and completed our new psychological evaluations and testing, we met and had dinner with a Colombian adoptive parent in Austin who helped us get in touch with our lawyer in Colombia (and also gave us valuable information to help us through the more complicated legalities of this case), we found a new home study agency and have already submitted all the paperwork, we found four good contacts to write up a reference for us, we've scheduled appointments and have been seen by our doctors and were tested for TB, Hepatitis B, and HIV, we've been blessed by at least some extra funds that people have sent our way, and our son was able to go to camp for five days.  I didn't think it was possible to get the ball rolling so quickly......When I told Julian how fast things were moving along, he said, "God is definitely in control.  I didn't understand that, but now I see it.  He is the One guiding everything here."

Still, I'm having a hard time looking into the future.  All I can focus on is getting these new psych. evaluations and home study to Colombia as soon as possible so we can be given a yes or no to continue.  THEN I can begin to look ahead to the future.  We're hoping to have a social worker from the Dallas area assigned to us any day so we can schedule our actual home study very quickly.  Last time around, we went through this whole process with such incredible joy and confidence in a certain outcome.  This time around we approach it with a lot more "fear and trembling", not really knowing what the outcome is going to look like, yet very confident that God has a divine plan for us and this is just another step He's asked us to take.

Last night in Bible study, we talked again of how God's power is made perfect in our weakness, how our trials just make us become stronger.  As we have been filling out more paperwork and answering questions about our own strengths and weaknesses as individuals, spouses, and parents, we both have realized just how much stronger we are now, how much more confident we are in Christ and in who He has made us.  Our growth as a couple, a family, and as individuals just shines so brightly in every paper we fill out.  Even if the boat were to stop here, with our new evaluations and home study still not being "enough", it's still worth the trouble just to see how far we've come and to see just who we have become.  So many people still keep saying to me, "If only they had.....OR....they should have.....".  I won't even go down that road because I'm thankful for the direction our story went.  I honestly don't look back and wish that any of it were different.  We wouldn't be who we are today if anything had gone differently.  God always had a plan, and it's obviously still in place, just as it was always meant to be.  Whether or not our little family ever grows through a legal adoption, our family has already grown in so many ways, more ways than we ever could have imagined.

I have now officially started our second book.  The general outline is in place, I've placed several poems at the start of certain chapters, and I've already begun to write the first chapter.  I have a feeling it's going to take me a little longer to write this one, though, because I have no idea how it's going to end.....