"Maybe you prayed too hard!!!"

I received a phone call from a church member on Wednesday night that went like this,

"Lynsey, are you still having a yard sale THIS Saturday?"

"Yes, we are still planning on having it."

"Well, I am at the church and I was going to put my donations in the fellowship hall and there is nothing here."

"Don't worry, we have some stuff in our garage that people have donated and we moved a few things from the fellowship hall to our Sunday school classroom earlier in the week.  I am sure we will have more things come in.  Just keep praying!"

"Okay...I'll do that!"

I will have to admit that I was a little nervous when I got off the phone.  I asked Adam, "What are we going to do if we don't have enough stuff to sell?"  So I just kept praying that God would move people to donate things...and I prayed, and prayed, and prayed.  Then, I went to church to meet a few hardworking volunteers on Thursday night at 6pm and I cannot even explain to you how much stuff we had!  We had stuff in the fellowship hall, stuff in our Sunday school classroom, stuff spilling out into the hallways, stuff on trucks...we had so much stuff I was overwhelmed with what to do with it all!  Everyone kept asking me if I was okay.  I think I had that deer-in-headlights look on my face.  My nervousness about not having enough to sell quickly turned into nervousness that we wouldn't be able to get it all out to sell it!  We (I say we, like I was one of the men doing it!) moved 40 tables (that is EVERY table in our church building) into the fellowship hall to lay stuff out on and it still wasn't enough room!  This is what the room looked like on Thursday night when we left...

And we didn't even have everything out yet!  Grandpa Owen came over on Friday night and he asked me...
"Lynsey, what do you think of all this?"

"Well...I am a little overwhelmed!  Owen, I prayed and prayed and asked God to please move people to donate things to this yardsale."

"Well, Lynsey, I think you might have prayed to hard!" ha ha!

We still had not touched about 1/3 of it!  We hadn't moved any of the clothes (and there had to be atleast 1,000 peices of clothes)!  We left at 11pm on Thursday  night and I could not sleep, I was so nervous we weren't going to be able to get it all out on Friday night!  Friday, we started again at 6pm and we worked and worked and worked and when we left at 11:30, it was atleast organized chaos!  We resigned ourselves to the fact that all of the clothes could not be hung up (although they hung up a ton of it) and there was no way we were going to be able to price everything...there was just too much! 

We arrived very chippper (well, atleast some of us!) at 6 am and began to move a lot of the stuff outside so that the room wasn't so crowded.  We worked on the bake sale stuff and then at 6:50am we welcomed our first customer!  And they kept coming, and coming and coming,  until after 2pm!  We never had a time when there were less than 10 people shopping!  There was such a long line at one point that there were 4 of us just taking money! 

It was an AMAZING day and I give all praise and glory to Jesus!  We asked him to move people to donate things and he gave us so much stuff we couldn't even price it all!  We asked him to bring people to buy the stuff and he brought hundreds of people, so many that after we had totally packed up at 3:15, there were still women looking through boxes of clothes!  We prayed that we would make $1,600 because that is what we needed to submit our dossier to Ghana and he gave us over double what we asked for!  All total, we made $3,326...at a yardsale!?!?  Who makes $3,000 at a yardsale???  All I know is that we covered this event in prayer and this was just another confirmation that this is exactly what he wants us to do!

I want to thank EVERY person who helped make this day such a huge success!  Thank you to everyone who donated stuff and baked goodies...and then came back to buy someone elses stuff!  I would name everyone but I am sure that I would miss someone!  Thank you to Scott, Joshua, and Bruce who moved every one of those 40 tables and a ton of stuff from different locations to the church.  Thank you to Aunt Janice who came to drop a few things off and stayed for hours to help (mainly because I think she felt like I was in over my head...and she was right!).  Thank you to Erica and Roxanne for helping to empty boxes and boxes of stuff!  Thank you to Hazel who had a plan!  Thank you to Kathy who was there before I was on Thursday and Friday and then left Friday night at 11pm and went home and made cookies for the bake sale before she came back at 6am on Saturday!!!  Thank you to Peggy, Sarah, Lauren, Jason  and Mom who hung up clothes until they couldn't hang up anymore (if you go to their houses and their clothes are on the floor, you can blame me!  They probably never want to hang anything else up as long as they live!)!  Thank you to Nicole for all the hangers!!!  Thank you to Stephanie, Frank and Cindy for pricing hundreds of individual items!  Thank you to Ashley and Caleb for making cards...they sold really well!  Thank you to our parents who played with our kids while we did all of this (I know it was a joy but still, we thank you!).  Thank you to Leigh for making all the bake sale stuff look pretty and for the coffee!  Thank you to Wayne, Sam and Roger who came right in time to help clean everything up!  Thank you to every person who prayed for this day!  And thank you to Jesus who gave us the idea :-)  Love you guys!

"I hope you know what you are doing..."

“I hope you know what you’re doing…”

This is the response I got this weekend from someone when they learned we are in the process of adoption.  So what did I respond with… “I think we do.”  This response is kind of funny now that I think about it.  Do we ever really know what we are doing?  I usually don’t.  Sometimes I think I have a really great idea and it blows up in my face.  For instance, just this afternoon, I cleaned up from lunch, began to prepare to make chocolate dipped pretzels with Eva, and put some bacon in a frying pan so that I would have that ready for dinner tonight.  Seemed like a good idea at the time but a friend called to see if they could come by for a moment and I of course said “yes” and then before I knew it, Eva was burning her hand on melted chocolate, Eli was screaming, and the bacon was burning…all in front of our guest.  I just laughed when she gave me a hug before she left and said “I hope that your day gets better!”  I told her, “Oh this isn’t a bad day, this is pretty normal!”  This story is for anyone out there who ever thinks that I have everything “together.” 

The truth is, I have absolutely no idea if we really know what we are doing.  All I know is that we are following God’s plan for us right now and I am overjoyed in walking in obedience to him.  We could have said “no” but we would have been hypocrites.  We have both accepted Jesus Christ as our savior and in doing so have chose to die to ourselves and live for him.  We have decided to say “no” to what the world thinks is normal and to embrace God’s plan for us.  We are choosing to adopt a child because God has adopted us.  We live in this world and love those around us because he first came and died.  We are in no way perfect people, we are just trying to live out what he has asked of us.  I am going to try to memorize that for my next response J   

I have been reading a few books lately about attachment disorders and various other things that can “go wrong” when we bring our child home.  These books have started to make me anxious about bringing our child home and since God’s timing is perfect, he had a perfect word for me.  Two Sunday’s ago, our associate pastor at Summerdean was preaching on fear and his question to us was, “If you knew without a doubt that something would work out well, what would you do?”  My immediate thought went to adoption.  My fear is that this will not work out well.  The more I read about attachment disorders, the more nervous I get.  The more people who tell us that our child will be black and how difficult it will be to raise them as white parents, the more ill-equipped I feel.  The more people who pose the question,” Do you really think you can do this?” the more I question whether we really can.  But the reason I feel this way is because I am focusing on the problem instead of Jesus.  A dear friend reminded me of this passage earlier this week…

Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear. But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” “Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?” And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” Matthew 14:25-33
Jesus made Peter capable of walking on water, but what happened?  Peter took his eyes off of Jesus and began to focus on his circumstances and then he began to sink.  This reminded me to keep my focus on Jesus and never to doubt his plan. 

So, No, I don’t know exactly what I am doing and I am not sure it is going to turn out perfect, but I do know that my God has promised this…

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

Since I know that he has called us to do this, I am not worried about whether it is going to work out well.  It is God’s plan and it will work out the way he wants it to. 

One or Two?

Thank you for all of your prayers!  Our second interview and the home inspection with our social worker went great...at least I thought it did!  I was very anxious about this interview and I am sooooo glad that is over!   We should have a rough draft of our home study by the end of the week!!! 
We have gone back and forth between adopting one child or two children since this began.  At first, we decided we would like two for a few different reasons.  One, because we wanted them to have a biological sibling, someone they looked like and connected with.  Two, because if we are going to go all the way to Africa and adopt a child, why not bring home two?  And three, because we have talked about having four children to complete our family so why not do the next two all at once.  Then we decided that we probably shouldn't do two for a few reasons as well.  One, because it was explained to us that sometime when you bring two children home that know each other, this can cause them to cling to each other instead of really connecting to your family.  Two, because it costs more money to adopt two children. Three, can we do this?  Bringing home a child from a different country and integrating them into our family is going to be very difficult, can we handle doubling the size of our family on top of that? And four, because, lets face it, two is exponentially harder than one.  When I was pregnant with Eli, I really assumed that having two children would be twice as much work as having one.  I think I was very wrong!  Having two children is much, much more difficult than having one...at least for me.  Along with that, two is twice the laughs, twice the hugs and exponentially more joy!  Having said all of that, now it has come to the time where we have to put down on paper our requests...do we want one child or two?  We know without a doubt that God will equip us to do what he is asking us to do so we are praying very hard for God's guidance in this and we would really appreciate it if you would join us.  Please pray that he will reveal his will to us and that he would make it very clear to us.

Trusting in Him,
Lynsey