Our Plan is not Always God's Plan

Hello everyone.  So sorry for the absence of an update on the adoption and how things are going.  Free time has not been much of a reality with 4 kids, ages 6, 5, 4, and 3 running around.  As you can imagine.  We also needed to sort things out through much prayer and needed some time to heal a bit.  But we do have some important news and thoughts to share.

We, after much crying out to our Father and serious discussion as husband and wife, have determined that it is not in the best interest of Joe and Emmanuel to be in our family.  While we feel called to adopt and planned for it to be a major reason for our move to Zambia, we know that God's plan is sometimes different than our own.  While this has been tough to swallow and digest, we believe His ways are always better than ours.  We also believe in James 1:5 when it says, if you need wisdom, to ask God, and He will give it to you generously.  Boy, has He done that this week.

As we parented Joe and Emmanuel these past two weeks and really got to know them, we found that they have some serious emotional and psychological issues.  Needs and issues in their hearts and minds that need to be dealt with now and for years to come.  We had to think hard about our abilities and resources to help them.  The reality came to us that it did not seem right to take them out of their culture and home country at this point in their life and throw them into a completely different culture where no one speaks their language in only 4 short months.  They are at least a year away from being able to speak and understand English well. They need more time here in a stable environment where they can talk about the things they have been through with people who understand.  The things they have experienced in their short lives are such that Mickey and I, nor anyone in our hometown, would ever be able to relate.  This was a difficult realization, because pridefully, we wanted to believe we could do it.  We also, as Americans, tend to think we can help by just bringing them to America, and while that can be true in many cases, we have found that it isn't the case with Joe and Eman.  We feel very strongly that God has communicated this to us.  These boys deserve the best and while we thought we were the best for them, we now know that we aren't.
Of course, we also had to look at our original family unit.  God has already blessed us with 2 young children.  As we thought about the great needs Joe and Emmanuel have, we knew that they would need most of our time, and that wasn't fair.  Our children, Evan and Alea, still need us and we have a great responsibility in parenting them.  In our minds, we thought that having all the kids be so close together in age would be perfect.  We quickly found that while this might work in some instances, it was not working for us.  We wish we would have thought this through more and prayed about it more when we were first thinking about adopting them, but honestly, at that point, we felt like since they were what was in front of us that it must be God's will.  We now know that this wasn't necessarily the case and more prayer and thought should have went into that.   Mickey and I also had to talk about our marriage.  Where we have been, where we are at and where we are going.  It is not easy to admit, but we know now that we weren't ready for this.  We wanted to be, but after much honest discussion, we are sure that we need time to work on our marriage in many ways right now.
To be clear, we feel the same way about adoption as we always have.  We feel the same way about God's power as we always have.  It is true that we can do amazing things if God is in it.  God can and does accomplish what we cannot do on our own.  But we also know that there is a season for everything in our lives.  We know God has put adoption on our hearts and while we thought it meant this year, He has another season in mind.  And this time around, we know we will be able to use all we have learned from going on this journey this year.  God doesn't waste anything.  It is all for our good.  As a friend wrote me this week, His refining fire is beautiful indeed.   
We want to thank everyone from the bottom of our hearts for all your support, love, and prayers.  While we didn't get the answer we thought was right, God has given us His answer and He is always right.  You better hold on to the seat of your pants for this next part!  Mickey and I visited with our social worker this week to let her know everything that I just told you above.  She understood completely and agreed that it would be a lot for the boys to move so soon to a new place so different than what they know.  She also informed us that in no way would this adoption be done by August, when we need to be home, but that is another story.  She suggested to check out a place called Tree of Life by Family Legacy.  It is an orphanage run by a organization out of Texas.  We told her we would stop there on the way home.  When we got there, we couldn't believe it.  What an amazing place.  And we actually got right in with the director.  This never happens in Zambia.  We shared our story and the director confirmed to us that this would be a wonderful place for Joe and Emmanuel.  The orphanage is designed for street children from Lusaka, and would provide them with the counseling, schooling, and familiarity they need.  As we went home after the visit, Mickey and I decided to pray about this possibility.  Our hearts were telling us that we really wanted Joe and E to be in a family, but we were really impressed with how Tree of Life is run.   After taking time to pray, we got a phone call the next day from the director.  He shared with us that he was having dinner with friends the night before.  These friends were American missionaries who are the coordinators of Action Zambia in Lusaka.  They have been in Zambia about 4 years and plan to be here at least the next 4 years.  For some reason, the director felt led to share with these friends, that we had stopped in to Family Legacy today to discuss 2 boys possibly going there.  This couple's jaw dropped.  They informed the director that they have been waiting for a year and a half to adopt a sibling group of boys ages 4-9.  They haven't heard anything from social welfare during this time, so they felt called to just wait on God and trust that it would come in time, even though they know as well as us how much work gets done by social welfare here.  Needless to say, the director informed us that they wanted to meet us and the boys.  We met with them today and they, without a doubt, want to adopt Joe and Emmanuel and we, without a doubt, feel like they will be perfect for Joe and E.  I cry tears of joy every time I think about it.  Isn't our God amazing??? They have already adopted a sibling group of 2 girls about 3 years ago from the same orphanage as J and E!  This couple speaks Nyanja, as well as counsels street children.  They also live in a Zambian community, where the boys will still be around their culture for sometime, as well as have Zambian sisters!  I don't know about you, but I am pretty much just in awe of how God has worked this all out in a week.  I want to write more about this, and will soon, but for now will leave it at that.
We still have the boys right now, as social welfare had asked for our help in finding the best solution for J and E.  We told them we didn't want to take them back to where they came from at any cost and to please let them stay with us for the time being.  Very grateful they allowed this and that God's perfect plan has been revealed.  We will work next week with social welfare on all of this.
Finally, this little blog post doesn't really do justice to all we have gone through and learned during this time. We apologize if this all comes as a shock.  Believe me, we are the most shocked of all. We never thought that after everything we have felt and gone through in the last year, that this would be the outcome.   Sometimes, when something is good and right, like adoption, you don't understand why God would close that door.  We are still trying to fully understand this, but God is working to help us.  If you have questions or thoughts for us, please share, but please know while we are extremely happy with the outcome, that this is still a sad time for us as we say our good-byes to these boys that we have loved for about 5 months now and deal with some of the reasons we felt like we weren't ready to adopt.  We ask for your grace and understanding at this time.  Once more, we thank you.  Your prayers have helped two boys who had no one, now have the family that we truly believe God had ready for them all along.