In spite of the fact that I am perpetually 10 minutes late to everything, I like to get paperwork done on time. We've been pretty diligent in doing just that, and in sending in every check needed when it was due. Nobody's had to wait for us, and it's been a nice feeling to know that.

God has clearly shown us the adoption road, and we want to walk well and not falter.

And when it's time to wait, we want to wait well.

We've received several emails this last week from Regina, our caseworker, regarding our place in line. She told us recently that we were number 7 in line, and she let us know this last week that, while we are currently at number 5 in line, the three families ahead of us in line will not be ready for their referrals for a few months. So that leaves...drum roll, please...us!

After reading the email, we looked at each other (with HUGE smiles on our faces) in disbelief, both of us wondering how we were going to come up with the remaining $18,000, but more than that, so completely excited that everything was finally happening.

I'll confess, we thought about shortcuts. Should we borrow from a bank? After all, if anything is, adoption is a cause worthy of borrowing money for! Or maybe borrow from our inheritance (with our parents' permission) with the intention of paying it all back?

Or maybe...

Maybe remember that God is on time, and that He has a child picked out already for our family - a child who will be ready for us exactly when we are ready for him. Because sure, it's possible for us to borrow from people and then spend years paying for the child who will be so worth it. But if God has been so faithful to provide everything we've needed up to this point, it would be foolish for us to assume that we have to take the rest into our own hands.

I read a story once of a man named Edgar who runs an orphanage in Mexico. He and his boys had run out of food, which wasn't unusual, and he sat down with them to pray. After they prayed that God would provide for their needs, Edgar had a choice: either he would go out and ask friends and neighbors to give them any extra rice and beans they had on hand, OR he would wait for God to answer his prayers. And keep praying.

After they were done praying the first time, the littlest boy piped up and said, "What kind of food does God deliver?"

Edgar smiled at the boy and said, "God desires to lavish His riches on you. Let's see what He provides.," They prayed again. Again, the little boy spoke: "Do you think...Will God bring us...meat?"

The faith of a child: to ask for the best in their time of need.

The man challenged that little boy to believe that God heard them as His children, and to ask again.

The same day, a man had flown into Monterrey, Mex. for a business convention. He told Beth Buckenberger, author of Reckless Faith, that he had lots of extra "product" that was no longer of use to him. Beth, embarrassed, told the man that she had forgotten what his business was, and he explained that he represents a meat company, and had brought choice cuts for potential vendors. Beth, connected to several orphanages in the area, said yes, of course she knew of people who could use it! She called Edgar and as she explained, he whispered, "Praise God!" and then turned away from the phone and shouted the news to his boys, that the Lord's response to their prayer was on its way over!

__And the boys at Edgar's home ate meat that night that would make a king jealous.

That man could have prayed, and then gone out on his own to do what needed to be done. But instead, he stayed on his knees in a room full of children who had the faith to ask for the best.

God likes to be asked for what we need.

So even though a small part of me - a part of me that's getting smaller every day -  would like to go out and ask every bank in town what rate they could give us on an adoption loan, I'm going to tell my soul to be still.
I'm going to keep praying, and I'm going to ask my children to pray with me. Because they know how to ask for the best, and I have a God who delights in giving it.

"If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so provie to be my disciples." - John 15:7,8

In the adoption world, delays are expected - especially when you're adopting internationally. When we chose the Korea program, I was impressed with the way everything was laid out. The timeline looked so nice and neatly packaged. We would start out as number 12 on the list of families waiting for boys, and steadily move up the list until we were at the top, probably within about 8-10 months. Then, we would receive our referral and wait to travel to pick up Leonard child #4.

And we were expecting delays.

What we weren't expecting was to be at #7 now, and to hear from our agency that we could expect our referral in as little as two months!

Now, I'm all about getting our referral as soon as possible (although I know once we have a face and a name, it will be very difficult to have to wait to go pick up our little goober). The problem is my faith. See, it's a little...lacking. At best.

Two months doesn't leave me much time to be the hero and figure our how we can "miraculously" scrounge up $17,000. It's not like I'll find that under our couch cushions! It doesn't leave room for the fundraisers we'd planned because those take 8-10 weeks just for approval, and we're still waiting on the last bit of paperwork to come in the mail for our application! It doesn't leave room for much of anything, because things take time in the world of fundraising, and our adoption timeline was supposed to line up nicely with that.

But as I shake my fist at the God who called us to visit orphans in their distress, I remember what it means that He is God. This wasn't my idea; it was His first. So my fist has to drop to my lap as I hang my head and open my hands to Him.

Do you ever see a verse written somewhere and know that God was sending that straight to your heart? I got one of those yesterday. Actually, I got the same one twice, from two different sources:

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." - John 14:27

So we'll wait on God to act, because to Him, it doesn't matter if we have two years or two days. Two months? Makes no difference. God knows we need help to do this. He knows we can't carry this burden on our own shoulders in this short amount of time. He knows that I tend to get stressed about money - because I don't trust Him the way that I should. He knows our weakest points, and uses them for His glory.

So I'm praying like crazy that our Father will look on us with favor and that He will equip us to go, right on time. And He has given me His peace.

8 weeks.

When we decided to move forward with adoption from Korea, we moved quickly and diligently, the way I believe God calls us to move when He's shown us where to go. Within a day we had filled out all of our paperwork for our application, written a check for a rather large amount of money (not to be confused with the very large amount of money still to come), and sent everything off in the mail with a prayer. On September 23, our agency sent word that they'd received our check and would be sending our request for approval to Korea the following week.

And then? We waited. The three weeks we were expecting our approval to take quickly passed, and the days kept getting crossed off the calendar as we continued work, homeschooling, laundry, cooking, cleaning, photography, bedtimes, and all the other things that make our days normal. But in the busy-ness of life, we were waiting.

_Doubts come often in the waiting.

When things don't follow my timeline and I have to remember who's God and who's not.

Honestly, sometimes it's harder to stand through a drought than a storm.


Last Thursday was a difficult day. Dustin and I were both weary after a long week. Ironically, when you feel down-trodden, it's the hardest time to be on your guard, and I'm pretty sure we were both objects of spiritual attack. It wasn't attack regarding adoption, but rather the temptation to give up on the everyday struggles. Just for one day. Just take a break; you deserve it...

In our weakness, God was our strength. He brought us to His Word, and in chapter after chapter we were reminded that God is good; life is hard; and there will be an end to these struggles. When that end comes, I want to know that we were faithful in the big things and the small things.

"The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing."
Zephaniah 3:17

Friday the email we've been waiting for showed up in our inbox while I was working at the computer. I'd like to say that I saw the little envelope in the right-hand corner of the screen pop up and I knew instantly that this was what we'd been waiting for - and I did! But I also knew it every other time it had popped up in the last 8 weeks. So I held my breath and opened it, wondering if it would bear the news that we'd been accepted by Korea--that we were considered good enough by whoever-it-is-over-there-with-the-rubber-stamp--and would be officially placed on the waiting list.

I'm normally what my mom calls "stoic," but this even-keeled heart was bursting at the seems as I read that Korea had officially accepted us as a waiting family--and, to top things off, that we were now number 9 on the waiting list with our agency! It seems that while God's been working half the world away, causing the right events to happen in the best time so that we can bring our child home exactly in His time, I've had to trust that He hasn't forgotten.

To be still. To wait. To know that the story He's writing is better than the story I would write, because He knows each chapter and each character intimately, and in His wisdom each piece of this messy story will fit together perfectly--for His glory.

So now, at number 9 on the list of families waiting to call a little Korean boy "son," we wait again.

We choose to trust that He will provide everything that we need, and that the God who sets the lonely in families delights in this story He is penning.

As an English major in college, when people talked to me about my degree it was usually accompanied by a look of sympathy and dread for my future. The concern of my friends, family, and random bystanders making conversation inevitably led to further questioning, which led to what, exactly, I was studying.

My emphasis within my major was on research, grammar, and communication. Literature? Eh, it's nice when I need a break. But what I really enjoy is spending hours pouring over what others have written to search for truth and then postulate my own opinions on where that truth leads, and why. I also wondered how -a writer persuades his readers to believe him. How does one effectively communicate with a variety of audiences? These were the questions burning in my mind as I wandered from class to class. My brain hovers in the place where liberal arts meets NERD.
Needless to say, I was pretty much alone on my track within my major. The nerds tended to congregate on the opposite side of the university campus - where all the engineering and science courses were. I was comfortable there, but I'd say the word, "English," and get nothing but blank stares. The same would happen on my own side of the woods when I'd mention my love for grammar and research, most English (literature) students' two greatest fears.

College is almost a decade in my past, but my love of research continues. This is why it took months and months for us to choose the country we were going to adopt from. Since Dustin's at work for most of the day, I took it upon myself (sort of grabbed it for myself, I guess you could say) to research all of the countries we were eligible to adopt from. Dustin graciously gave me that. And true to the definition of nerd, I used a spreadsheet to categorize the pros and cons of each adoption program, and then another spreadsheet to rank various adoption agencies according to certain criteria that Dustin and I agreed were important to us and for our adoption journey.

The frustrating thing was that I felt that, no matter how much research I did; no matter how many hours I spent on the phone with agencies; and no matter how much I wanted the answer of where we should go to be staring me in the face, glowing in neon letters, it just wasn't there. We prayed intensely for over a year that God would open and close doors. And He was faithful. He showed us through various means (like Ethiopia drastically reducing the number of adoptions they were processing - the week we planned to submit our application) that He has a plan for us. But while we wait (I'm not good at waiting) for Him to bring all the details together, we've had quite an adventure exploring our options - and improved our sense of geography at the same time. You can read more about how we chose Korea in the post  "Chapter 2 - A Rest at the Starting Line."

Here's a little glimpse at what our path has looked like so far:

(I'm thankful that the trip has been only in our minds and hearts so far, and we haven't had to pay for all that travel!)

Five and a half weeks ago, we submitted our paperwork to the agency we chose, and they promptly sent it off to the Korean government (or whoever it is in Korea who gets to say that we're either acceptable or unacceptable parents for one of their precious children). We were told that the average wait to hear back is 3 weeks. Two and a half weeks over what we thought we'd be waiting may not seem like much, but it's almost double what we expected. And, I'm not good at waiting!

I'm stuck. We're in this limbo between knowing where we plan to adopt from, and actually being on the waiting list of families. There's no research I can do to make things move along. No phone calls I can make to find out what the holdup is. The ball is completely out of our court. In fact, it's so far gone that we can't even see it. Not even a tiny speck.

So I've had to take comfort in the Word. I've had to remind myself that I am not in control. To be still and know who is God. To be stuck and to be still are two very different things, but God is refining me. He is teaching me that when I am stuck, all my writhing and wiggling and frustration does not remove the fact that He is going before us. My job is to follow. To walk after Him, but to wait when He tells me to. And to remember who He is.

"The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still." Exodus 14:14