Home Visit

 I have known a lot of people who have had home visits done.  I even remember when we had our home visit  for my sister to come when I was 11.  I know it is not a big deal.  I know our social worker is completely on our side.  But this morning, all of that knowledge does very little to quell the panic inside me!  Is everything neat enough?  Do we look like we know what we are doing?  Does it look like we can parent the 3 we have, plus ANOTHER?  How will my children act?  How will I act in my nervousness?   The home study process so clearly mimics so many experiences we have had (and will continue to have) through out this process.  There are no guarantees.  We are not in control.   I can clean until she arrives at 4:30, scrub my kids faces until they glow, decorate my house and have beautiful appetizers laid out on the table and pray the dog doesn’t get ON the kitchen table to gobble them up before her very eyes =)    And we are still worrying about the wrong things.  That is not what she is looking for, at. all. 

BUT, I know who is ultimately in control of the whole day!  God is just as in control of our Home Visit today as he is our paperwork arriving in the Philippines in a timely manner.  He is also in control of immigration here in the US and the hearts of the Filipino social workers who said we could adopt her in the first place.  Who sped up the process so she could have a family…this orphan who was deemed unadoptable.    Why is it after so many confirmations from the Lord, that I am still so prone to panic?  I am praying this morning that the comfort God has so lavishly given me in recent weeks will just enfold me and put me in the very safe safe covering of His protection.  Please pray for my mind to be focused on him and secondly on what I already KNOW to be true.  My house is fine….it just needs a little attention…not 8 hours of attention, just a little. 

On a second note:  We have the blessing great friends.  You know who you are.  People who are supporting us in the hard places, doing things you don’t have to, but feel led by God to do.  Loving on us FOR GOD.  Yesterday I experienced that in a whole new way!

I have been reminded over and over of a passage in my study of Esther….Mordecai is begging Queen Esther to go before the king to intercede on behalf of the Jews in Persia.  To stop a great genocide from happening.  Esther 4:14  “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will rise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish.  And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”

I have always focused on the last sentence.  “For such a time as this”  But this week the first part of the verse is what has really drawn me. There are some things I have been struggling with emotionally, some hurts that have overwhelmed me.  But yesterday God interceded through our friends. “relief and deliverance…will arise from another place.”  You know what this says to me?  Our humanness does not stop GOD from doing what he intends.  If we have a need that is not coming from where we think it should or would, we should not worry, he WILL FIND ANOTHER WAY.  Do we really think it all rests on us to carry out God’s plans?  How crazy and self-absorbed does that sound?  Yesterday my friends were God’s tool to show me that he will offer relief and deliverance from another place.  I have been thanking him for them ever since.