hope restored...

The last few days have been a whirlwind.  Not long after blogging about the silence that we had grown so accustomed to, we learned that our profile was being shown to a birth mother on Wednesday.  And she was going to be induced on Monday...yes, Monday!  We were encouraged by our social worker that we were a good fit, but we also knew that there were other families she would be considering.  We prayed earnestly for God to guard our hearts, but in reality our hearts were already on a plane headed to pick up our baby.  We had a hope that we had not yet experienced in this process.  That hope was taken from us the following day when we were told that she picked another family.  There are not words to describe the disappointment and heartache we felt, and honestly still feel.  We just couldn't understand why God would allow this to happen. This was supposed to be our baby...but it wasn't.

The last few days have been anything but easy, but we have already seen God's faithfulness in the midst of it. I was reminded of that faithfulness Friday morning while reading Beth Moore's Believing God...

"God calls us to surrender our own agendas on the altar of His will, knowing that His will for us is GOOD, PLEASING, and PERFECTLY SUITED.  When all is said and done, the biggest sacrifices of our lives will be the time when we chose our own way and forfeited God's pleasing will for us.  The last thing satan wants, however, is for God to be pleased.  Satan's ultimate gripe is with God.  His chief goal is to get back at God for not putting up with his arrogance and his desire to be "like the Most High" (Is. 14:14).  He cannot touch God, so he does everything he can to get to His heart by getting to His children."

I told some friends earlier that we decided this was like a dress rehearsal.  It helped us to realized just how quickly our lives could change.  If nothing else, this experience has given us hope - hope that God has not forgotten us, hope that there is activity with adoption, and hope for the baby we will one day hold.  It has reminded us that our completion is in Christ, and not in being parents.  We are peaceful knowing that God may have simply used our profile to allow this birth mother to see a glimpse of Him.  And for that, the heartache was well worth it.  I am grateful that I serve a God who never changes and a God who has bigger plans than my own - plans that are GOOD, PLEASING, and PERFECT!  Please pray for this birth mother, her precious baby, and the family who will be blessed to hold their son for the first time on Monday!