Taste and See That the Lord Is Good!

I knew December would be a tough month for me. I had Thanksgiving set up as a turning point in my mind for our case with the twins. While we were at Shaun's parents for Thanksgiving I found myself dreading our return home because I feared hearing bad news sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Each time I would feel fear I made a conscious effort to return to the arms of my heavenly Father. As I've learned to put my trust in Him I have experienced His goodness in new ways. Whenever I need to feel reassurance and comfort, He meets me where I'm at and brings me great peace.

I've realized recently that whenever I try to rely on my own strength, I often times spend my days in fear and anxiety. When I rely on the Lord's strength I have amazing, supernatural peace. I know that fear is not of the Lord so I am discovering the truth of Philippians 4:6-7:

 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

There have been some incredible moments of encouragement over the past couple of weeks. We see God's hand moving in situations like last week when we sat down next to an older couple whom we had never met before. They saw the girls with us and told us that they had adopted twins many years before but that it was a crazy story. Well, it turns out their story was an incredible story of God working in a seemingly impossible situation. There were many parallels to our situation and I left that interaction feeling like God, in His providence, had orchestrated our meeting.


Just today our caseworker came over for her monthly visit. I usually dread any interaction with any of the people involved in our case because I always fear bad news. Over the past couple of days I had Isaiah 52:7 running through my mind:

How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news.

I prayed that that verse would be true of our caseworker when she came this morning. As it turns out, we were very encouraged by her visit because it sounds like the paternal grandmother may be having a change of heart about wanting to take the girls! That has been our specific prayer since the beginning and we see God moving very clearly. We still have a long way to go with this whole process but I am so thankful that even though I was dreading the month of December, God has given us great encouragement during a season that should always be filled with much joy and celebration as we anticipate the birth of our Savior and King!

Lessons learned over the past several months

Life is busy. We are loving being parents of twins but it is exhausting at the same time! Foster care is a unique form of parenting and over the past 4 months since we first met the girls we have learned many things and grown in our faith in new ways.

The primary thing I have learned to cling to every day is God's sovereignty and truth. At times it is hard for me to believe that God truly wants to bless me with my hearts desire. I often feel that God's plan for me is to just test and try me. The thought of losing these girls is more than I can bear at this point and I ask myself if I could take another loss. Over the past two years we've experienced infertility month after month, we've taken a newborn home from the hospital only to fall in love with him and lose him 7 weeks later, and we've embraced the love of a 2 year old and 5 month old sibling group only to say goodbye 5 weeks later. Now, after loving the twins for 4 months and feeling more attached to them than any other child, I just don't know what I would do if I had to say goodbye. All this is to say that I am learning to cling to the truth that God DOES love me and He DOES want what is best. He doesn't delight in my pain but uses these things to refine me as gold is refined in the fire. I know and believe that God is sovereign and His plans for these sweet girls will prevail. Our biggest obstacle right now is the paternal grandmother who is saying that she wants to take the girls. Within the next couple of months we will find out if she is going to be able to take the girls or if she will be found unsuitable as a caretaker. We continue to pray that her heart will be changed and that she will realize that the girls are in a good home where they have bonded and attached to us. We believe wholeheartedly that God hears our prayers and that He can and will answer them!

From a practical standpoint, we have learned how to better manage our time. I find that my time is not my own anymore, and when Shaun gets home from work he no longer gets to just rest and relax :-) I am learning how to be faithful with my time by not wasting what little time I do have. I am still trying to figure out how to get time in God's Word each day. Sometimes I do well getting in the Word during nap time, but sometimes I spend all of nap time trying to get one or the other girl to sleep. I know that the Lord understands my life but I also know that I need to prioritize what little time I do have to spend some of it with my Savior.

Before becoming parents we were often told how having kids will put you face to face with your own selfishness. That has been a huge lesson, especially with twins. Both Shaun and I have realized over and over areas of selfishness in our lives that God is working on removing through our responsibilities as parents to our precious girls. We have been given a great responsibility to love and nurture them and we don't want to fail because of our own blind selfishness.

There have been many more lessons learned that I won't go into. Overall we have been incredibly blessed and we couldn't love these girls anymore if they were from our own bodies. We thank God for that kind of love that He first bestowed upon us through our adoption as His children.

Traveling with twins

This week we get to leave the state with the twins and go to the Navigators National Conference in Louisville, KY. It was a last minute decision to try and get permission to take the girls with us because they are just not doing well with new environments and new people. I was not liking the idea of having to put them in respite for the 5 days we were going to be gone. Respite is basically just when a foster child goes to another foster family for the time that we are out of town because it is not always possible to take foster kids with on every trip that we make. We would love to always take our kids with us, but it requires permission from the caseworker, birthparents, and attorneys, so permission is not always granted.
We are just thankful to have received permission to take the girls with us. It is going to be an adventure flying with twins! We have never traveled with children before, and our first experience will be double the trouble! If you have any traveling tips let us know :-)
Once we get to Louisville we are going to be blessed by my parents presence as they will be driving down from Chicago to come help with the girls. Shaun and I will be busy going to various conference events for much of the day so we are so thankful that my parents were willing to come and help with the twins. It should be a fun 5 days!