She Is So Ready - His Perfect Timing

(Elisabeth got to hold Haddi Ruth a few days ago. She thought she was in heaven!)

If it was up to my sweet Elisabeth, we would be bringing home Gabriel like...yesterday.

She is so ready for her newest little brother to be home.

(E's self-portrait of her holding Gabriel...apparently on a windy, star-filled night.)

I think she (along with the other three) has a hard time understanding why it takes so long.

Jas and I have the distinct advantage of having been through 4 previous adoptions, and we've learned over (and over) that the Lord's timing is, in fact, perfect.

We are constantly asked when we're out and about "So what's going on with the adoption...any word yet?" I think people are confused or saddened for us that we don't know anything yet.

But I just smile and answer "We're just waiting." And I truly mean the smile...I truly feel peaceful.

It is such a good-feeling place to be. Just resting in Him. We've walked with the Lord through too many things now to feel any other way at this point.

Elisabeth's adoption was our first, and perhaps biggest lesson in the Lord's perfect timing. We had to wait (rather impatiently) for 18 months to reach China's minimum age requirement of 30, before we could even send our paperwork to China. All that time I'd planned things so that we would be ready to send our dossier to China as soon as the younger of us hit that magic age. Well, it took another FIVE months for our paperwork to be ready. (I was truly about to bust a gut!) At the time I would have told you that the delay was due to slow-moving US government Immigration Services officials...but I learned it was the Lord.

Our paperwork went to China exactly when it needed to in order to be matched with the exact child that the Lord had intended to be our child since before the foundation of the earth.

And we saw the Lord move in similar-but-different, providential, awe-inspiring ways with our other three adoptions.

And that is what we're right smack dab in the middle of right now. The Lord working out His perfect timing. Perfect timing for our family. Perfect timing for our precious Gabriel. Perfect timing for some currently-unknown-to-us birthmom.

I stand convinced right now, on this side of it, that once we're on the other side of it, we'll look back and say "He worked it out perfectly. If it hadn't all happened exactly like it did...it wouldn't have worked out in this way. And this way is perfect."

(E's portrait of me holding Gabriel. The paper she drew it on could not have had a more apropos verse on the bottom: "For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord. "They are plans for good." Jer. 29:11 TLB)