One of my MANY skills is patience. I am so amazingly gifted at waiting. I never get anxious, worried, agitated, annoying, or concerned. I walk through situations which require waiting or trusting God when I see nothing happening with incredible grace and faith. People often comment how they wish they could be like me when it comes to waiting.

All of the above is a MASSIVE LIE!!! I HATE waiting. In fact, the only thing I hate more than waiting is fasting. I really LOVE food and giving it up for a season of time is just painful. But waiting……ugh. The problem is, (and just admit it, this is probably your problem too), I want a microwave life but live in a crock pot world. So annoying.

God had, in our eyes, performed at least three or four major miracles….things which should not have happened, but they did, in this process. We hadn’t received a firm YES from Poland yet, but we were doing everything we could do to have the best shot at receiving it. Now, as our home study began with gathering an enormous number of documents, we moved into waiting mode. We tried so hard to go on with normal life. It was July at this point. We were SUPER busy with some other amazing miracles God was performing for the church we pastor (that should be a blog in itself), and the normal summer stuff with our four kids. Just waiting.

On July 21st, Amy and I took 9 kids from our church up to Hartford City, Indiana for our fellowship’s Kid’s Camp. On the way home we stopped at Riley Hospital in Indy to visit a young man from our church who had recently had surgery. On the way out, I checked my email. We had an email from Rebecca!

CHI’s director and the on-the-ground liaison were able to advocate for us on behalf of our four kids with the authorities in Poland. They told them about our family, showed them pictures, and talked with them about how serious we are. They understood we didn’t quite fit their “normal” parameters but we really felt like these kids were our children. They shared with them about how we had literally put our money where our mouth was and signed on with CHI and booked our home study. I don’t know if the folks from Poland were impressed or not……but they said YES!!!

THEY SAID YES!!!!

With just one more hurdle to clear…..they wanted the CHI ladies to meet with the foster parents and the local adoption authority in the town where the kids were located. If they said YES to our family, the we would be on like Donkey Kong!

Rebecca said we should know a definite by the end of that week.

More waiting. But we were elated! It kept getting more and more real. Little by little Amy and I were letting our hearts fall in love with these beautiful Polish kids we’d never even met….didn’t know what size shirts to buy them….don’t know how they came to need us….they have a history all their own of which we would never be a part, but we knew; just knew, we had to be a part of their future……We loved these kids like our souls had loved them since the beginning. It’s just right. We loved them….So we waited.

We still love them. Our kids love them. So we wait. Because they are waiting for us.

When God decrees a thing………..