One Year Ago..Feb. 5-8

Feb. 5 - One year ago today......I met my daughter Esther.  It was a beautiful day, one I will never forget.  It was much the same feeling as when I gave birth to my other children.  It was hard and wonderful and a relief , there were tears of every kind all at the same time.  I was unsure of many things at that moment, but very sure of the joy, and the love that I felt, and the presence of God creating something beautiful, and allowing me to be a part of it.  I am grateful beyond words to Him for allowing me to be a mom to EVERYONE of my children.  

Such a  gift straight from God Himself.

Feb. 6 - One year ago today.....We went to church with the Redeemer House kids, and my sister and her team of women, that just happened to be in Uganda at the same time (that still just blows my mind how the Lord worked the timing out on that extra bonus), and then we loaded up in a van, with 11 other people and headed on a 7 hour journey to go to our court date for adopting Esther.  That 7 hours was such a rich time; as I spent those hours getting to know my daughter.  It was also exhausting, the Uganda roads are crazy, just crazy, and being pregnant and in the back of a van in 85 degree weather with many other people and no air conditioning was very challenging physically for this mama.

  I thought my bladder or my brain or stomach might explode at any time.  But God had compassion on me and everyone else in the van, and none of the above happened.  

Feb. 7 - One year ago today, we arrived at the courthouse to see the judge at our appointed time.  Feb. 7 was EXACTLY 9 months to the day after Charlie and Lashae had met Esther.  Isn't that amazing how the Lord does those fun things. 

 We were used to waiting 9 months for our kids.  :)

  We sat at the courthouse for 3 hours to only find out the judge would not be hearing any cases that day.  We were so disappointed and scared, as we had no guarantee of WHEN she may hear our case.  We went back to the motel, and spent some good time with Esther; we showed her tons of pictures of her siblings on the computer and she got to know each of them by name.  That was fun, and she still talks about that day.  After showing her a bunch of pictures we all laid down and took a little family nap together.  That was also something she remembers so vividly.  

Feb. 8 - We got up the next morning, put on the same clothes as the day before, our "court clothes", and headed back to court in faith that the judge would hear our case.  We had nothing to do but pray and sit and wait.  We waited another 3 hours and began to get very worried that this would be a repeat of the day before.  Then a man came out and announced that the judge would hear the adoption cases ONLY!!  That meant us, and one other family that had traveled up with us.  We went into the judges chambers and went through a VERY intense time of questions and was told that we would get a ruling Feb. 16.  

This was us after our day in court.  These are our lawyers and friends standing with us. 

There are so many details that I don't have the time to type out, but the word that the Lord just kept impressing on my heart the entire trip was PERSEVERANCE.  When I would open my Bible to read before we went to court on that second morning I read the scripture: 

2 Peter 1:5-7

New King James Version (NKJV)

Fruitful Growth in the Faith

⁵ But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, ⁶ to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, ⁷ to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.

The only thing we could do to persevere was persevere in our waiting, and SHOW UP.  There was not one thing that was in our control, but just HANG IN THERE.  We were not to give up or get discouraged, but persevere in our faith that the Lord would go before us and handle the situation.    I am in awe of how the Lord comes through in such beautiful way.  He always teaches us along the way, and why should we be surprised , He is the Father, He is never going to miss an opportunity to teach His children more about faith, more about love, more about Him.