This year, Eva and Eli were so excited to dress up for Halloween. Eva wanted to be Rapunzel. Her Nana made her a Rapunzel dress complete with long braided hair for Christmas last year and Eva wears it at least three times a week so that was the natural choice for her. Much to Eva's dismay, Eli was a fireman this year. She REALLY wanted him to be Rapunzel's lizard from the movie but he was not having it!
As silly as it seems, I was getting both of the kids dressed that evening and I was overcome with sadness that little "E" wasn't here to dress up with us. I started to think about all the things I was sure she would be here to celebrate this year that have come and gone. I thought she would be here for our first day of preschool. I thought she would be here for our annual family beach trip. I thought she would be here to dress up on Halloween. Each day that goes by, I don't understand why she has to be there without a family when we are here desperately waiting here for her arrival.
Earlier this week our adoption agency called and said that they would be sending a shipment of Christmas packages to the Congo and that they would be delivered to the transition home that little "E" is staying in on Christmas Day. Adam was really excited to tell me this news because he knew that it would bring me great joy to pick her our a Christmas present and to know that she would receive our gift on Christmas. I will have to admit my first reaction was not joy. I think my response to Adam was something along the lines of, "I really wanted her to be here this Christmas." You see, I was sure that she would be here for Thanksgiving and Christmas this year but now we know that she will not and this too has been really hard. Anyways... as the day went on, I decided that I needed to "choose JOY" and be thankful that we could send her a present and I started to get really excited to go shopping with Adam, Eva and Eli to pick out her gift! On Thursday of this week, I was up early praying and I always include the little boy that we received a referral for back in March along with his older sister in my prayers. All of the sudden, it occurred to me that maybe we could send them a Christmas present too so I asked Adam that morning if it would be okay to contact our agency and see if we would be allowed to send them something and he of course said, "yes". So I e-mailed our agency and asked if we could send those two children a Christmas present too.
About an hour later, I received an e-mail back saying that we could not. She said that they would have to send fifty-five other presents for the other children in that orphanage if we did that.
After reading her reply, I was so upset. I just sat on the couch and cried. I know that sounds silly but I just needed to send these kids something. The thought of the two of them without a family just breaks my heart, the thought of any child without a family is just overwhelming to me. Anyways, I cried and cried and then I had to pull it together and get on with our day. A couple of hours later, I received a phone call from someone and it started out as most phone calls do, with the person asking, "How are you?" Well, instead of giving the normal, "fine," I was truthful and told them I was having a rough morning. I explained the e-mail that I sent asking if we could send those two children a present and that the agency said we could not because they would have to send fifty-five other presents and then the coolest thing happened! The person on the phone said, "Go ahead and tell them we will send all the presents to the orphanage." I went on to explain that it would be very expensive to send that many presents, that we would have to buy all the presents which I guessed would be around $1,200 and then we would have to ship them which I would guess would be another $300 or more and I certainly did not have that kind of money and the person on the phone just said, "I have the money. Just tell them we will send the presents." Well, you can imagine what I did, I am crying so hard at that point that I can barely tell Adam what happened so he called the lady we had been speaking with at our agency and she could not believe it! She actually asked Adam if he was serious! She was astonished and overjoyed that a person would do that! She told Adam how appreciative she was and that this would be a huge blessing to these children.
A couple hours later, it occurred to me that if our agency had said "yes," that we could send those two children a present, there would have been fifty-five other children there without one. I feel like the Lord reminded me that He is sovereign. That even when it looks like he is saying "no," sometimes the "no" is because he sees the big picture and he knows what will happen if we are just patient. Sometimes the "no" is because he has something much better planned! This was a message I need to hear right now. I don't know why little "E" is not here yet but I know our God is sovereign and He is STILL working all of this for our good and His glory!
So in 24 hours, I have gone to five stores (some of them, twice!) and we have enough to fill sixty gallon zip lock bags to send to the Congo! Praise God!
