Update on Life

Things are getting busy around here as we gear up for another summer with Eagle Lake Camp. Shaun is in the midst of hiring the summer staff who will serve as counselors for the kids who come to camp. So far he has filled more than half of the positions and only has 3 more guys to hire. For some reason the girls positions always fill faster...I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that the females ALWAYS turn their applications in 1-2 months before the guys typically do?? This has been a noticeable pattern since we started in 2009!

We are really looking forward to another summer of camp life. It is such a blessing to live in community with the rest of the Eagle Lake staff for those 4 months. The summer is a rich time of spiritual growth and challenge. It will also be fun to have the girls up there with us. They will most likely be walking all over the place by then!

Speaking of the girls, they will turn 1 in exactly one week! It's crazy to think about how much they have changed in the past few months. It was only Christmas that they were not even crawling and now they are moving around and doing everything but walking on their own. They are a joy and a delight and we often lay in bed at night and remark to each other how stinkin' cute our little girlies are!

I am keeping busy at home going through a similar routine each day. I love my time with the twins but trying to maintain a somewhat organized and clean space as well as provide wholesome meals for my family can prove challenging at times. I've found that I don't enjoy cooking as much as I used to because I have to manage fussy girls each afternoon as well as try and get a meal prepared. One of these days it will get easier again. When does that late afternoon fussiness end? Whenever that is, I'm looking forward to it! Lately I have really enjoyed the beautiful Colorado weather with 1-2 walks each day. The girls seem to also enjoy the great outdoors as long as the wind isn't blowing too hard!

We are also happy to report that our visits with the girls' paternal grandmother went really well. We are greatly encouraged and it seems like she is really starting to trust us and is becoming very open to the idea of us keeping the girls rather than trying to raise them herself. Time will tell. We continue to have open communication with her and to send her pictures and videos. Thank you for all your prayers!

Meeting with the girls' paternal grandmother

Over the next couple of days Shaun and I will be taking the girls to a couple of visits with their paternal grandmother. We have been in direct communication with her over the past couple of weeks and now she has flown in from out of state to spend some time with her grandchildren. We are praying that as she spends time with us and with the girls she will begin to trust us and see that we are really serious about wanting her to be in the girls' lives. Right now she seems determined to try and get custody of the girls because she doesn't believe that we would honor our word when we tell her that we want her to always be their grandmother and to have contact with them.
We are continuing to trust in God's sovereignty and we hope and pray that He will perform a miracle in the grandmother's heart this week. Will you join us in praying the same thing?

Is Worry My Idol???

Do you ever worry? Do you ever think constantly about something that is happening in your life that seems impossible and endlessly difficult and painful? I do. In fact, that has been my daily struggle for the past 6 months. It sometimes amazes me how I can flip from feeling total trust in God's plan to a place where I cannot see anything good coming from my situation. Oh, to be human. Oh, to be sinful and so far from the holiness that God calls me to!

For those of you who are like me, who worry and fret and live an anxiety filled life, I want to leave you with words from my daily devotional. This was yesterday's reading from the book "Jesus Calling" by Sarah Young.

WORSHIP ME ONLY. Whatever occupies your mind the most becomes your god. Worries, if indulged, develop into idols. Anxiety gains a life of its own, parasitically infesting your mind. Break free from this bondage by affirming your trust in Me and refreshing yourself in My Presence. What goes on in your mind is invisible, undetectable to other people. But I read your thoughts continually, searching for evidence of trust in Me. I rejoice when your mind turns toward Me. Guard your thoughts diligently; good thought-choices will keep you close to Me.

Psalm 112:7 and 1 Cor. 13:11 

27

Today I turn 27 years old. I was reflecting this morning about how things aren't exactly how I expected them to be on this day to mark my 27th year. Two years ago we started trying to have a baby. I thought I'd have a one year old child by now. However, month after month the disappointment came, month after month I asked God why not me when so many of my friends were having babies?
In my heart I already knew the answer to that question. I've always felt that if God didn't see fit to give us biological children it would be okay because we would adopt. Adoption has always been something I've wanted to do, so maybe God would form our family through that means. However, I wasn't prepared for the pain that infertility brought.
Sometimes the journey we end up on is not one we would ever choose, but it is a journey that is necessary and filled with sweet blessings in the midst of the pain. Our sweet twin girls are one of those blessings. If you would have told me 2 years ago that we were going to do foster care and that we would come to love these two blond twin girls like our own even before they were officially ours, I would not have believed you.
I often think about the fact that if I had become pregnant on our timetable I would have missed out on knowing and loving these girls and the 3 sweet boys that we cared for before them. God knows what He is doing and this journey is teaching me to trust in His plans more than my own. There is still pain involved in the journey but with God's grace I choose daily to focus on the blessings more than the pain.

An Enemy Can Have Many Faces

Over the past couple of weeks I've really felt an urging by the Holy Spirit to pray for the twins' birthmother. I've specifically been praying that God would give me love for her. I've realized recently that in many ways I view her as my enemy. Not because she has ever done anything mean or spiteful to me. In fact, we have not spoken very much at all considering we've had her biological children in our care for the past 5 1/2 months. No, she is my enemy in my heart because I view her as the largest threat to us being able to keep our sweet girls.

All of this was really brought to a head yesterday because Shaun went to the latest court hearing and we found out that she is doing really well with her treatment plan. Our caseworker has assured us that reunification is not anywhere in the near future, but still, it doesn't make us feel very confident when we hear that the birthmother is doing well with her treatment plan. After all, the laws are all in place to protect the birth family's rights. Foster parents really don't matter at all until the rights of the birth family have been officially taken away.

As I just said, this latest news doesn't make us feel very confident- in ourselves and our own power to change the situation. However, we continue to believe that God can perform the impossible and being able to keep the girls is starting to sound impossible from a human perspective. Shaun has an especially strong faith that these sweet girls will be ours in the end. We just can't see it from our perspective right now.

We were praying over the whole situation last night and God really started to do a work in my own heart. I began to sense that the Lord wants to work in mighty ways over the next few months. Not just to let us keep the girls, but in a bigger sense, He wants to transform lives! God cares as much for the birthmother as he does for us. He wants us to show her His love. So far in this whole process we have done a pretty terrible job of that. We have only seen things from our perspective of wanting the girls. If we will be obedient in loving well, then God can transform not only her life and heart, but our hearts as well.

So, that has become my predominant prayer. May God give us supernatural love for the girls' birthmother and may our hearts and hers be transformed by the love of Christ. May she be able to make loving choices for her children and may the lives of these sweet little baby girls be protected and placed into the arms of the parents God has chosen for them.

I write this today because we covet the prayers of God's people. This is a very difficult road to travel down but God continues to lift us up. Will you join us in petitioning our Heavenly Father?

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.