A Lesson Learned. . .The Hard Way

I hate to learn lessons this way, but this hard head of mine doesn't know many other ways!

We are in the process of adopting from Ha*ti! It's been an amazing journey so far and will be in the end as well.

The thing is when we "officially" dove in after 10 years of "listening" I felt that this would be more than just adopting a child from Ha*ti. I thought it would become more than just adopting, somehow, by advocating for adoption, helping others through the process, speaking at churches about caring for the orphans! Some sort of ministry as a result of it!

As soon as I spoke this allowed, the spiritual attacks came!

Nothing to stop the adoption, but just a lot of frustration along the way. . .making me want to throw the towel in.

This week was one of those! You see, we are in a rush because of some changes in Ha*ti. (To see the back story, please refer to www.thetarvinfamily.blogspot.com)

Everytime we went to do something, we learned about something we did not realize. Because we did not know about its importance, it caused a lot of stress and grief. Re-copying, extra document gathering. . .

Herein lies the lesson,

the day after I was ready to throw in the towel, I am listening to Moody radio.

Nancy Lee DeMoss is speaking, and she's talking about how she ended up staying at home to raise her kids rather than pursue her career that she wanted.

She never knew at that time that she would later have a platform to speak for women when she chose to stay home, but if she had not, she would not have had the experience for the "plan" God had later. A plan to speak on behalf of motherhood. And, she needed her experiences for that!

She added that Moses had to herd sheep for awhile before he could fulfill God's plan to "herd" the Israelites out of Egypt.

Now, that might not sound profound to you, but to me it was huge!

I don't know what his "big" plan is for us, but I do know that the more we learn and understand about the process of adoption, the better our ministry can become in the future.

We might have to go through some extra "bumps" in the road in order to better counsel someone later.

I know God's  plans are bigger than my dream of our little Ha*tian boy. And, believe me, that is a big enough plan. . .and that plan is good enough for me.

But, I think He has in mind a number of orphans He wants to see cared for. . .that maybe we can't take in but we could help someone who wants to!

Can't wait to see what is to come!