Thursday, February 07, 2008

Financial Woes - Being Faithful

We continue to work on our adoption paperwork. Silly me, I honestly thought we were finished with the paperchase awhile ago! That is one thing all adoptive parents must be aware of, the paperchase is an ongoing process. I don't think anyone really emphasized that to us. I compare it to doing your taxes over and over and over and over..... well, you get the picture!

We are trying to remain faithful but my mind drifts to the money issue constantly. I catch myself asking, "How ARE we going to afford this adoption?" I find I have to dismiss this question immediately or I will dwell on the lack of funds for hours. Currently, we need $450.00 for our homestudy re-evaluation and $240.00 travel fee for the social worker to visit us since we live so far from her. Well, this might as well be a million dollars. We just don't have it! And, I really don't know where we are going to get it. Ah, but I am reminded that God provides. And on goes this cycle of mind chatter.

My love of scrapbooking has led me to become a Creative Memories Consultant. I started this business to fund my habit but soon realized I can use the income to save for our adoption. I have a secure website and proceeds from online purchases will be directly deposited into our adoption savings. Check it out at www.mycmsite.com/bethmurray, you might find something you just can't live without. Shop online and help us bring home our little girl.

Since the beginning we have explored money saving strategies (see Pennies from Heaven). Frankly, if I have one more yard sale.... We are now investigating fundraising ideas. We are very interested in any ideas others have found successful. Please share your ideas with us by leaving a comment - thanks in advance!

And God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. Phillippians 4:19

Blessings
Elizabeth

Saturday, February 02, 2008

When God Speaks - Obey

Greetings!
We have not been involved with the adoption process for several months now - see Heavy Heart I believe the New Year always brings us hope for great things. My surgery went well and I am on the mend. Don is still underemployed but continuing to establish his own business. In January, we decided to start a morning devotional for couples. I guess you could call it a "New Year's Resolution" but I have never been successful at resolutions so I am reluctant to declare this as a resolution!

On January 24, 2008, we planned an evening to go out to dinner (economy style) and stop by the Christian Bookstore to pick up a guide for our devotions. We were not sure what we were looking for so we put it in God's hands and had faith He would show us the way. After several hours, (Don and I both can get lost in a bookstore) we finally settled on the book Moments with You: Daily Connections for Couples by Dennis and Barbara Rainey. Once we got home that evening, we decided to start our devotion and we have been at it ever since. They say it takes 30 days to establish or break a habit - we have 21 more days to go! Man, are we on a roll!

We are starting our day with prayer and devotions, what a great way to begin each morning!

Strangely (or according to God's plan) around the beginning of January, Don and I both began having feelings that we needed to get our adoption back in process. We started feeling a need to get our paperwork in order because ...just maybe.... We have been here before and realistically, we do not have the finances to complete our adoption, so neither one of us said anything to the other about what we were feeling. That is, until we started our devotions.

As we began praying and doing our devotions daily, we started talking more and we shared our feelings about the adoption. We were compelled to add the adoption to our daily prayer list again and ask for guidance and wisdom. Within days, we received a series of phone calls from our adoption coordinator and our homestudy agency encouraging us to get back into the waiting room.

I have to admit, I was overcome with anxiety about this and could not wrap my head around it. It felt like a cruel joke. Don and I had resigned ourselves to the fact that we would never be parents. We had given up the idea of adoption - we told everyone it wasn't for us and that God had something else in mind for us. We even thought perhaps our purpose was hosting exchange students.

Not sure if we were really "hearing God tell us to continue with the adoption", we focused our prayers on adoption and asked God to "hit us over the head please" with His will for us.

On the evening of January 29, 2008, we received a call from our adoption coordinator telling us that we are one of the last families left from May 2006 when the agency lost accreditation. She informed us that we are at the top of the list but we MUST get our dossier updated! We were stunned!

We were feeling overwhelmed with happiness but also overwhelmed with sadness knowing that our adoption savings had been spent on living expenses for the past 5 months. That evening we talked about it and prayed about it and came to the conclusion that we could not afford to adopt. Why must it always come down to money? We went to bed that night praying for some message from God that our decision was the right one.

On January 30, 2008, we began our usual routine. Get up, feed the cats, make coffee, brush teeth, begin devotion. Bamm! There it was, our answer. The devotion for January 30 was:
Adopting God's Heart In the middle of the page is this statement:

Caring for the fatherless is not simply a compassionate act. Adoption is not merely an additional means of growing our families to the desired size. Caring for orphans is about obedience and expressing the heart of God.

Clearly, God hit us over the head! The message was very clear, God was calling us to adopt and we were saying "not now, we can't, we don't have the money......."

As I write this entry, it seems that God was speaking to us clearly all along, we were just hard of hearing! God calls us to have faith and trust in Him that our needs will be taken care of.

We pulled out the adoption file and we are beginning to work on updating everything. We know that it will be a slow process but we are forging ahead as obedient children of God.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28

Obediently sitting on a limb of faith,
Elizabeth