I will trust in you

This past summer our family launched on an adventure to Niagara Falls, Canada. It was a blast, and my first time even remotely outside of the good ole' USA. The strange thing about it was we had been planning for the last three years to go back to Disney.

All of a sudden, around February of last year, God stripped me of my desire to go to Disney. But why Niagara Falls? The truth is, after a difficult year, God had really been speaking to me through a Chris Tomlin song called, "Waterfall." The lyrics proclaim,

"Your love is like a waterfall, raining down on me.."

Waterfall by Chris Tomlin

I remember thinking, "I want to see the biggest, most powerful waterfall so I can really get what God's love is like for me." It is not just refreshing or cleansing, it is powerful!! I also remember saying many times, God must have some kind of plan for us getting our passports. We better be leaving the country again soon!!! That was in February. In May we felt the call to adopt from China, and in June, on the trip home from Canada, we surrendered to that call.

The day after coming home from Canada I was attending a prayer conference in town. On the way to the conference that morning I was just reeling. I was super excited and also a little terrified. I was going into this adoption process with my eyes wide-open to the difficulties that would lie ahead, the first of which would be to raise $36,000! And wouldn't you know a song came on the radio. I was hearing it for the first time and it became my theme song:

No such thing as impossible by Building 429

This past week my family and I took another "surprising" trip to Washington D.C. It was a fun way to not only immerse ourselves in American history, but also to expose the kids to a little bit of China while we were at it.
Below is the Friendship Arch given to the United States as a gift from Beijing in the 1980's. We hopped off the Metro on our way to the zoo just long enough to snap some shots of and with this beautiful piece of art.

 The main thing that really got us thinking about taking a spring break trip to D.C. was Mackenzie's love of Pandas that has developed this year! We often talked about getting pictures of the Pandas in China for her. We knew of the Pandas in the San Diego zoo but it was too far. One day it occurred to me that we not only wanted to go to D.C. before we had another little one in our family (and would have to push the trip several years off), but also because we were much closer to these pandas than California or China!!

 The first two days of our trip I received calls from our social worker letting us know there were a couple files we could review. It is always so exciting to get a call, but we knew right away that the special needs listed in these files were more than we felt we could handle. This past week was a wonderful time with my family, but in the quiet moments between falling asleep and before everyone else was awake, it was also a time of spiritual warfare for me. We are approaching 10 weeks of being logged in and have no idea when we might finally see our daughter's file. It could be in 2 days, it could be in two months. We just don't know.

So today God gave me another theme song, 
I will trust in you by Lauren Daigle

I do hope that you will listen to this song, because it is one that we always need to hear, but that I especially needed to release my soul into a sacrifice of praise today. This song reminds us that God's plans are good, that he is good, that he is always there and is always for us. So, as the chorus proclaims to God,

“When you don’t move the mountains I want you to move, when you don’t part the waters I want to walk right through, when you don’t give the answers as I cry out to you, I will trust, I will trust, I will trust in you. ” 

We are waiting. We know nothing. We don't know when the files will come, when we will get a call, or when we will finally be matched. We don't know when we will travel. Everything is in limbo, and it is just as God would have it. This journey of adoption is an amplified version of my life journey in general. It is all about surrender. It is about giving up the illusion of control and resting in his hand. It's about letting him carry me, plan for me and fight for me. Jesus said, "Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest." The Lord declared at the start of an Old Testament battle, "The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still..." and the Warrior King and psalmist, David, continued, "Be still and know that he is God." Be still. Trust me.


I will trust in you...