Adoption update - ish

Many of you have been asking for an update on our adoptions. Even though I've wanted to do an update post for a while now,  I've been busy with our recent school changes and getting caught up on some things that had been neglected.  I was also waiting on some other news.
News on our kids is about the same. A few weeks ago we received updated pictures of them. They are looking more and more healthy thanks to our agencies awesome foster care. With each set of update pictures I long more and more for them to be home and to be their momma. They are beautiful!

The agency has all the paperwork we could possibly give them at this point and now we wait for things to process. We are hoping and praying that we will be able to travel late winter/early spring to get our kiddos!

Many of you have also asked how the Love Don't Cost Nada benefit concert went. It was great and we are blown away at how God is providing for these adoptions! A very special THANK YOU to Webfiling, everyone involved, and those of you who came or donated to help us raise money through The Fatherless Foundation! Drum roll please! Over $10,000 was raised!!!!! This does not include the many donations that were just handed to us in the weeks leading up to and following the benefit! We feel truly blessed and humbled by how God is bringing His plan about! Money and support is coming from people and places we least expected and that is what is so cool! There will still be some money needed for our flights, the trip, and other adoption needs, but we trust that God will bring everything to completion!

Something that many people have said to us when they find out we are adopting are things like how kind of us, or nice of us, or that we are either saints or insane. My response to this is that we are not naturally kind or nice. We are definitely not saints. And I ask God everyday if we really are insane and pray that we aren't. I remember a message this last summer at church when the pastor speaking said that following God will look like craziness to the world around us. Following God makes us look insane because sometimes God asks us to do things that we could never accomplish on our own strength. We're simply trying to do what we believe God wants us to do and we trust that He will continue to show up. He's adopted us into HIS family and God clearly calls His children to care for the orphaned as He has cared for us. I often tell people that if anything good comes out of this journey it will be because of how good God is. Our home is made up of five giant sinners. Apart from God we are just five giant sinners adopting two more giant sinners. To the person who doesn't know Jesus, those odds don't look promising. But God can take the worst of sinners and use them for His glory and I pray that He does that with our family.

Many people also say how excited we must be. I response to this is a big fat YES! We are SO excited, BUT we are also scared. A few days after we received the first picture of our African son, Caedmon and I were laying in bed talking one night. He was upset about something and I was trying to get him to let it out. Finally he said that he didn't think he wanted us adopting anymore. He was feeling scared of the unknown and worried that we wouldn't have enough love for five kids. I told him about how when he was two and I was pregnant with Payton, I was uncertain that I could ever love our second child as much as I loved our first. But God just gave us more love to give. And then when Reagan was born God gave even more love to pour out. Mom is tired a lot and wishes she had four arms instead of two, but love for all my babies has never been in short supply. I told Caedmon that I have prayed a lot that God would supply more love like that again for my new babies. Babies I didn't get to carry in my womb but, my heart. I trust He will supply more love that will be needed.
I also reassured Caedmon that it's okay to be scared, but that it's what we do with it that matters. We could stop the process because of fear of the what ifs or because we are scared of how hard things may or may not be, but we would miss out on what God wants. It is okay, no needed, to cry out to God and say we are scared and that we desperately need Him to calm our anxious hearts and give us courage. It's not okay to stop walking with Him and disobey Him because we are scared. Caedmon seemed satisfied with this encouragement and I thanked God for the words to give him confidence, security, and excitement again.