Extraordinary Monday!

Aaron usually has a full day of surgeries on monday, but it seems God had other plans for him today.... He had ZERO patients scheduled for surgery, which meant, he could stay home with us! The boys started Spring Break today, so that was a treat for us... and as it turns out, we really NEEDED him to be at home because God wanted us to pursue adopting the little girl on our agency's waiting child list!!! We woke up as usual and had our bible reading time and Aaron & I started praying, talking about adoption, and meditating on scriptures that I felt the Lord gave me lastnight as I was thumbing through the book of Psalms. I couldn't sleep lastnight, partly because I was feeling so much excitement about the possibility of petitioning for the little girl so I decided to do what Bill Johnson had said in one of his messages... (He said that sometimes he just reads the book of Psalms from chapter one and he keeps going through all the chapters until he finds one or two or more that God speaks to Him).. So, I did that... went through the Psalms after praying God would speak to me....

He gave me a BUNCH of them, but here is one that REALLY brought peace to me and I felt like He was directly speaking it to us for this situation:

The Lord says, "I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you."

When the LORD is watching over you and telling you that HE IS GUIDING US ALONG THE BEST PATHWAY FOR OUR LIFE, then there is NO FEAR. I had mixed feelings about "What if this is NOT God??" "What if this is just ME wanting what I want?" So, knwoing that God knows our hearts, our weaknesses, and knowing that He knows we just want what He wants, this verse gave me so much peace.

Another incredible one He gave us was this scripture...

DAY BY DAY THE LORD TAKES CARE OF THE INNOCENT, AND THEY WILL RECEIVE AND INHERITANCE THAT LASTS FOREVER... PSALM 37:18

When I felt this scripture came from the Lord, All I could say was "wow"... God KNOWS this little girl... He "takes care of the innocent"... She is an innocent child, born in a sad situation, but God is saying "HER LIFE IS NOT OVER... HER CIRCUMSTANCES LOOK BAD, BUT I AM WRITING HER STORY... SHE IS GOING TO RECEIVE AN INHERITANCE THAT WILL LAST FOREVER. I explained to Aaron that I felt strongly that whoever ends up in our home will inherit GOD as part of her heritage!!! She may not have heritage that lasts forever now, but she will once she gets here. In my heart, I felt like SHE IS THE ONE that will inherit this... but at the same time, I didn't know she was 100% ours yet.... I just knew that we were supposed to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.... Aaron agreed totally that we are supposed to move forward and ask our agency about her and begin the process of petitioning for her... So, at 9AM, I called our agency and asked Marci and she told me that there were lots of people asking about her, but that we had a good chance of adopting her since our homestudy is already in Taiwan and we could be the first family to submit a homestudy for her. So, we asked for more info and planned to call Dr. Faucett (infectious disease specialist that Aaron works with alot) or Dr. Chunn (pediatric infectious disease specialist) about her condition. As we began to pray and wait for the paperwork to be emailed over, we felt like God was saying to us NOT to get a "second opinion" about her condition... that we need to go by faith and not look into what others might think her life would be like with this disease...I was waiting on Aaron to make the final decision and when he said "Yes, I think we should pursue adopting her." I started bawling.... It just suddenly hit me that this girl could be our daughter!!! So, we called Marci back and said we want to pursue adopting her! She transferred me to Fei, who gave me instructions on how to write the LOI and get a homestudy addendum done to add Hep B as a special need condition. So, Aaron called Juline Bodnar, our social worker and she agreed to fax an addendum over to Fei... In the meantime, we received the information about the little girl... her name is Li-Xuan Wong... Her mother is 37 years old and has 3 other children with her ex-husband... the oldest is a girl (13 years old) and lives with her grandmother and the 2 boys live with the dad... She has no contact with her ex-husband or her sons. She lives alone working so she can send money to her mother and her daughter. Her story made me cry... it made me realize how empty life can get and how much that could've been ME. God indeed is good to bring Li-Xuan out of that life and into a new life. She was born at 4:27pm on 1/31/08 (only a day after Eden Askew, her cousin!)

We typed up a new LOI and received a call back from Marci asking us to think about submitting an LOI that includes a little more info on how to treat her condition. So we did that.

I called Ann Mara, Anna, mom, Gloria about our potential adoption! I am so excited!