nothing happens by "chance"

I'm sure you are probably wondering how on earth this picture of my hubby with his brand new car (drove it home yesterday) and pictures of our baby girl fit together... But bear with me here, they really do!

I am always amazed at how the Lord works. For quite some time I have been silently praying that the Lord would open a door somewhere somehow for a ministry or "something" I haven't even honestly understood exactly what I've been praying, but I've known for a while now that our family needs some sort of new direction. I know sketchy, but that is all I have to go on at this point!

It "just so happened" (because our God is really really amazing) that the man who sold my husband his car also happens to be the head of an adoption ministry here locally. They aren't an agency but are a support and resource center as far as I can tell from their website. I am just floored that out of all the sales people on the floor the day my husband went in, and even walked past a few who weren't doing anything that the one the Lord directed his steps to would be not only a christian but a christian with a desire to defend the fatherless, a topic obviously desperately close to our hearts.

I don't know where all of this will lead or if it will even lead to anything. We've been asked to share our story for a book that he is working on about adoption, and shared a book that he thought we should read about adoption. I am just so excited, even if nothing comes out of this. To see that the Lord is intricately involved in guiding our lives, he provides for our every need. Even just the need to know he is providing.

This was just a beautiful reminder of how perfectly He weaves His good and perfect plans together. How He brought our Evie home to us in such an amazing way. (a way I might add that was my first prayer starting out on the adoption process, little did I know how exactly the Lord had planned to answer or what it would involve!) But she is here, and I feel as if we are at the start to a new road of some sort, again sketchy, I know NOTHING of what that new start might be but I pray with the deepest longing that whatever it is, we will always stand and praise our God for He is mighty, and I pray that others will be inspired to follow the call to defend the fatherless... To bring them home if that is God's plan or to defend them in whatever capacity that the Lord calls.

I know that going into our adoption I was unsure of how things would go, confident that both myself and my husband would love an adopted child equally as much as our birth children. 

I can say with my whole heart now, that is more than true. She is OURS. Adoption is NOT second choice or second best. Adoption is just yet another way that God builds our families. A beautiful Biblical way.

I love the quote: "children are love made visible" Going through the adoption process taught me that in the most real and tangible way. Our daughter Evelyn, even though we didn't have a face to put to her name or in the end even the tiniest shred of hope that she might ever come home. It was love that carried us through, the constant reminder from the Lord that He loved us deeply enough to adopt us as His children, but also that He loved our Evie enough to know who she was and when she would be placed into our home. We loved her deeply before she ever came.  I look at her sparkling brown eyes now and smile in my heart.

"Evelyn is love made visible"

I pray that as others see the sheer delight we have in our beautiful princess sweetpea that they will also be encouraged to take that step out of their comfort zone and seek the Lord's guidance on adoption as well.

I just also had to share, last night I painted my little girl's toenails for the first time! Motherhood is incredible with all these tiny new details and moments to be remembered. It took my mom and I to keep her still and get them blowed dry fast enough but it was so full of laughter and joy and delight in the joy of a child!

I simply can't even imagine if we hadn't stuck in it with the adoption process, I don't remember life before my little delight... Look at that face!! How could I have ever lived without it or how would the Lord have ever sparked such a passion in me for orphans, I want every orphan, every unloved child to be just like my Evie, loved  & cherished with a mommy and a daddy...