GOTCHA Day - #7

7 years ago in a tiny, overcrowded, cluttered and smelly office in Xian China, lives were changed forever.  After many months of waiting, I distinctly remember looking around at all the other families that were being brought together at that very moment wondering where is "the one", where is mine that I have waited for all these months...  And in that moment, she appears - asleep in the arms of the woman that cared for her for the first years of her life.  Many emotions ran through me that day but one look in her sweet scared face and I knew GOD had this. Gotcha Day's are special to me in a different way than Maddie and Mia's birthdays are.  I was there at that moment in time for their Gotcha Days - It marks the binding of what God so purposefully threaded together - the crescendo in the story that God is writing in my life.
When I think back at all the small details of that day I so vividly remember, this year I can't help but think about all the months I waited for her (and for Mia).  Waited.  But God uses "all things" we are told.  Even the wait, I ask myself?  Yes - He is IN the Waiting!!  Those 7 months I waited to travel to China and return with Maddie were teaching me something.  What I found was, during those painstaking months of waiting my reliance on GOD to get me through each second of the day was stronger than ever.  I fought back fear and insecurity through long prayer time and realized that HE was sufficient in my lacking.  That as we are inpatient and want instant gratification HE is working all the smallest of details out for HIS glory and our good.  I learned that wait is necessary - that the stillness that comes with waiting allows us to connect with our emotions.  To sit with them, feel them because they are telling us something.  Even in moments of joy or pain - our emotions speak to us and guide us to the Almighty.  The wait teaches us so many things.  My waiting taught me patience (which I am still not good at but getting better), perseverance, blind obedience, humility and many other things.  The Waiting is a necessary teacher in life.  Listen to it, learn from it - it is a worthy life lesson to learn.

Happy Gotcha Day Maddie! #changedforever #couldnotimaginelifewithouther