Happy Birthday Esther

Esther is 12 today!!!  (23rd of February)

I'm amazed and incredibly thankful that God trusted me to be Esther's mom.  Being her mom for almost 2 years now has been one of the most growing, and challenging and wonderful and blessed experiences of my life.

Charsie and Kennedy and Esther.  Kennedy and Esther have been good friends since day 1.  Kennedy is the daughter of one of our bestest friends and closest neighbors in the world.  When we adopted Esther, they adopted her just the same. 

Parenting Esther and the journey to adopt her has been "the thing" that has drawn me closer to Jesus more than any other experience in my life.  

Parenting Esther, who is an absolute awesome kid, but a kid that has endured much heartache and hardship, has taught me a lot about this world and about myself.

  Most of which I don't like what I've learned.  

  I'm not as patient as I need to be, I'm not as loving as I need to be, and the world is full of evil. 

  I have also learned more about God than I ever knew before.  

ALL OF WHICH I LOVE!!!

 God is totally faithful, and has revealed Himself to me. He has shown me His love and His kindness and His patience in such a real and  personal way.

As I grow and learn I can see a bit more of Him and less of me.

God has used our Esther to open our eyes to things that are hard to see and opened our ears to things that are hard to hear, and we will never be the same. 

 The things we have seen and heard and learned through Esther's adoption, are things we needed to see and hear and learn to grow in our walk with the Lord to learn to love Him more and to learn to love others more.  

Sisters and friends.

We went to dinner to celebrate Esther's birthday, and I sat amazed as I stared into these brown faces and I could see what 

ONLY GOD

 could bring about in less than 2 years.

All these girls, from Redeemer House Orphanage, now in families within a 15 mile radius, clear across the world from where they started.  

(in more ways than one)

Only God knew what He was doing and we just got to be the blessed ones that got the privilege of being a part of His work. 

 His Blessing!!!

Charlie and I laughed as we sat at dinner and marveled at all that we were looking at and then we were astonished at how PERFECTLY God matched all these families with the kids that He did.  He picked the exact family for each of these beautiful girls and you could see it so plainly. 

 Even with a different skin color we could see the resemblance that each girl had to her family.