For most of my life I had very minimal exposure to God and religion. My father was raised Jewish, my mother was raised Lutheran.  My father couldn’t afford to send my brother and I to Hebrew school and was angry with that, and so we never went to Jewish Temple, yet my father didn’t want us raised to believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior. 

I never knew what to believe, we celebrated Hannukah and Christmas in our households, but Christmas was always about Santa and Christmas Trees and gifts, for us it never had anything to do with the birth of Jesus.

I’m still in a very wierd place in my life, I believe in God, but that’s all I was ever brought up to believe in. I believe in Jesus, but I don’t know much about him other than the basics. So I still get nervous.  I don’t know why, but I do.

I always grew up feeling as though I missed out on something by not having a relationship with God. In my adult life, I’ve always tried to be the best person I could be, believing that someday I’ll figure it all out.

I have to admit that I have never had as close of a relationship with God as I have since we started our adoption process.  I do believe there are signs and God does speak to us, if we listen and look. 

When Cullen and I started our adoption process we were broke, plain and simple, robbing peter to pay paul and always struggling financially, yet we both knew adoption was what we wanted.   I remember I prayed silently on the way to our very first informational meeting about adoption and by the time that meeting was over, we knew we were adopting from China. There was just not question about it.  It felt good to be so certain and I thanked God for making the path so clear to us.

Next came our dilemna of money, where were we going to come up with this money.  Thankfully when you adopt, the money is not paid all at once, so we were able to figure things out, I prayed, A LOT.   Someway, somehow, everytime we had a big amount of money that was going to need to be paid in the adoption, the money was always there. Whether it was a bonus from work, or a promotion or raise with retro pay. It was somehow always there.  How could that not have been the work of God?

Cullen and I have been waiting for our daughter now for almost 21 months.  Most of these months have flown by, but the holidays are always hard for me.  I just want so badly to be a Mom and the holidays are always a reminder of what I’m not. I know I shouldn’t look at it that way, but I do.  I’m very thankful for the wonderful husband I have.  I’m thankful that I still have my Mom with me and we have a great relationship. I’m thankful for my dear friends who’ve been such a great source of support of us.  I am never not in recognition of all the wonderful things God has provided me in my life.

However I can’t help but miss the one thing he hasn’t provided me yet.

Earlier this week I had a bit of meltdown.  So many women I know are announcing their pregnancies right now, and it just made me jealous and sad. I’m so tired of watching everyone else become parents while we sit and wait patiently (or sometimes not so patiently). 

I prayed to God Thursday night when I went to bed. To give me the peace and patience and grace to be grateful for the many gifts he has given me, and to be patient for the ones yet to come.  

I woke up Friday morning feeling much better. Much happier and more at peace. 

I went to work that day, I left early around 2:00.  Cullen was doing a book signing at a nearby comic shop so I decided to surprise him and stop by on my way home.  When I got there, we walked around the shop for a few mins and talked.  For whatever reason I decided to check my email via my cell phone. I don’t do this very often, especially when I’m on my way home anyway, but I did that afternoon. 

As I logged into my email I found a weekly update email from the director of the China program with Children’s Hope.  I opened it to see if they had announced referrals for the month of December yet.  Well they didn’t but what they did announce was that China had completed the processing and review of dossiers from March of 2007 and had moved on to April of 2007 families. 

This is such a big deal for us.  This means that China has officially approved us to adopt.  If they had had any questions they would have asked right away and we would have heard, although we still have to wait for the agency to receive confirmation from the CCAA that all of their dossiers went through, I feel very confident that we’re ok. 

It’s crazy how God communicated with us.  I was at such a low point, even to the point of questioning whether we were on the right path or not, and then, there is it, like a billboard on the highway, the gentle nudging of the God to remind that, this is the path he picked out for us and we’re there, and he’s there and everything is going to be ok.

I have so much to look forward to in the months and years ahead.  I can’t wait to share them with Cullen and with our soon to be daughter Katie, and I really can’t wait to share them with God.

God is Good.