Changing Directions

Not sure if anyone is still out there reading since I haven't posted since October!! While I still love food/cooking, my desire for trying out new recipes has been taken over by my desire to remain sane as I care for my family :) These days we stick to what we know works... tacos, spaghetti, hamburgers, etc.

So for now, no more recipes for food but the blog will continue... just taking a detour as far as the topic is concerned. Some of you may know this but our family is growing again.... and this time it is through the gift of adoption! This blog now will serve as a place to document our lives as we go down this path to find our little girl somewhere in China!

We just started the paperwork & it will be a long journey with her most likely joining our family in 2012. Our excitement for our daughter grows more and more each day and the kids are ecstatic about having another sister.

An aside, but there were so many cool ways that God confirmed to us that this was the path he has planned for us. Crazy things. For example, I was in the car praying one day about it and being like "God, what should we do? I just need a sign." Then pull up to a stop sign and look to my right and there is a small sign in someone's yard that says "Thinking about adoption?" Another instance, I was burdened to pray one day in December for her birthmom and was in tears as I could not imagine her putting some clothes on her, tucking her snug in a basket, finding a safe spot and then just walking away... leaving behind her baby...who I KNOW she loved but her culture dictated that she could not keep her... I just felt so disturbed by the image and couldn't quit playing out that scene in my mind... both the image of the mom walking away and of my baby girl being all along. Then I left to go to my mom's house and hear a speaker on parenting (thanks Kelley Gage!) and she said something so unrelated to what she was talking about but it was God speaking directly to me!! She said something to the effect of, can you imagine what Moses' mama felt as she fixed up his basket, set him gently in there and placed him in the river and just let him go... trusting God to be faithful to care for her baby and that everything would be ok? I can't fully explain but amazing peace flooded through me that God was faithful to moses and his mama and God never left him but was right there with him in the river, directing his path... so surely God will be faithful to care for and comfort my baby and to do the same for her birthmom, who is simply trusting that her baby will have a better life. (Of coarse, we hadn't told anyone at that point so I had to bite my lip and hold back the tears as she was speaking.)

So, why blog about what will undoubtedly be a gut-wrenching, personal, intimate & life-changing journey? There are so many reasons floating around in my heart and mind so here are a few.....

* There were so many blogs that I read that encouraged me as we prayed about whether or not this was where God was leading us. Being able to read honest words about the joys and trials helped me to have a realistic view as we approached this journey. It also allowed me to see God's hand at work in transforming lives. My hope would be that someone else out there who is praying about adoption would be encouraged by reading our story. I can promise I will be honest but I can also promise it won't always be pretty!

* Secondly, I love to write and never seem to have an outlet for it. I lived in China for a year after college and writing my newsletters to send home was such a high for me. It allowed me to really process what I was learning and to more clearly see God's hand at work. I hope that my blog entries will be like "stones of remembrance" that we can all point to one day and say "this is when God did this" or "that is when God moved like that."

* Thirdly, I want a collection of my thoughts, people's comments, etc. to one day give to our daughter so that she may know she was loved, cherished and prayed for before any of us even knew her.

* Fourthly, I hope that we will all be challenged in our walks with the Lord. Or if you don't have a personal relationship with Christ that He would use this to prick your heart. This journey to find our daughter is exactly what Christ has done for me. He sought me out when I did not know him. He loved me when I had done nothing to deserve His love. He restored me and redeemed me that I might be called a child of God.... it is all really mind-boggling. And at the same time, for both of us, this seems like a natural step to take because of Christ doing it for us. I can already tell that through the months ahead, God is going to help me to understand His love for me even more...and it is such an exciting place to be.

* Finally, we want folks to join with us in the next year or however long the process takes, so I wanted a forum to put our prayer requests out there in hopes that others will join us in prayers. The Bible clearly calls us to care for orphans and I know that how exactly God has called you to do that will look different for each person. My hope is that He calls some of you to come alongside us and be committed to prayer for our family and our daughter... because it WILL make a difference for the kingdom of God!

With all that said, the next 5 months will be consumed with paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork. Tomorrow we are going to be fingerprinted to make sure we have no past criminal recored with the FBI. I told Derek that now was the time to come clean because I was about to find out everything about him! Haha!

Ok, so our little girl is most likely alive or about to be born.... it is all a bit surreal... to think and know that God created her for our family but that she is halfway around the world... to think that we will miss out on so much of her early days.... so here are our prayer requests for now:

1. That she will be safe, warm and well-cared for

2. That she will get great medical care

3. That she will be in foster care and/or have a christian caregiver who will pray over her. (we obviously know that the chances are greater that she is in an orphanage but the Bible tells us to present all of our requests to God so we are just asking Him to do this for her.)

4. That God would "command his angels concerning her to guard her in all her ways." (Ps. 92:11)

5. That God will allow her to literally feel His presence when she is alone in her crib and that He would "exult over her with joy, He will be quiet in His love, and He will rejoice over her with shouts of joy." (Zeph. 3:17) (God is such a God of detail and I keep thinking about how much it calmed my other babies to lay their heads on my chest as a newborn and to feel my heart beat. While she will not be able to feel the heartbeat of a mother right now, I take great comfort in picturing her little head, laying on God's chest and literally feeling His heartbeat for her.)

So that is it for now! I'll keep you posted along the way! (and please excuse my excessive run-on sentences and grammar that can make my mom cringe at times... my heart often rambles and just doesn't care so much about that stuff!)

In Christ, Rushton