Forgotten?

Have you ever felt forgotten?  Passed by.  Overlooked. 

Me too.

This is different than being jealous, at least I think it is. It feels different.  When you feel forgotten you can still feel genuinely happy for those who don't appear to be forgotten.

Feeling forgotten doesn't mean that you are, its just how you feel.

God made me a feeling being, He gave me this heart that feels things deeply.  There have been times in my life when I wish that I didn't feel things so deeply, it hurts too much sometimes.  And yet, I know there is a reason that He made me this way.  I can't ignore how I feel, so I choose to explore these feelings, to sort them out and to fill in facts to go along with these feelings.

I am going to be really real with you for a few minutes.

My heart is aching, literally, physically aching for my children to be home with me.  This might be hard to understand, okay it is, right?  I have never met these children, never talked to them, they are not really mine and yet my heart tells me they are.  Imagine for a minute being separated from your kids for a year, having no control over their lives, who is interacting with them, who is teaching them, what they are eating or what kind of medical and dental care they are getting.  Its hard friends. 

Now don't get me wrong, our agency has a wonderful foundation set up in Thailand to care for children like our two little ones, but its a foundation, they are with a foster parent instead of their forever family.  My heart longs to be close to them, to wrap my arms around them and speak to them of Jesus' love.  I long for them to know that we are committed to them, today, tomorrow, and always, no matter what is ahead. They are our kids and we love them, so very deeply we love them.

There is one, seemingly simple, next step that we are waiting for, its called first approval.  We need, our children need, for the Thai adoption board to review our case and say yes, yes, you can adopt these kids.  Unofficially, we have already been told that, but we need to hear that officially. 

This week in Thailand there was another board meeting.  Six families got first approval.  Six families.  This is amazing.  There has been so little movement all year and over the last month there have been close to 15 approvals.  I am genuinely happy for each family that has gotten first approval, but I am also sad because we have not been one of them and according to how long we have been waiting and what we have been told, we should have been.

God has a perfect plan.  I know that.  He is good and He is trustworthy.  I know that things happen in His time, not mine.  This is a lesson that I am continually learning. I know that God hasn't forgotten me and I trust Him.  I choose to trust Him even when it hurts, even when it feels like I've been forgotten.  I choose to rest in these facts, He sees me, He sees my children, and He has a perfect plan.

If you feel forgotten today, wherever you are and whatever is going on in your life, know you are not alone.  And, know that you are not, you are not forgotten.  He loves you.  He sees you.  Even when you don't feel this, rest in this fact.  Even when I don't feel this, I will rest in this fact and know, I am not forgotten.

I painted this canvas a couple of years ago.  Last night, I saw it through my tears sitting on a shelf in my bathroom. 
God's Word spoken to me. This is what I choose to do today, with all my heart, I choose to trust in the LORD. 

Pad Thai Recipe

Here is my Pad Thai recipe for those who are interested.  This is actually not originally my recipe.  A dear friend, Pim, taught me how to make this when I was living in Thailand.  She was such a good cook!

This dish is pretty simple and you can buy most of the ingredients at a grocery store.  The rice noodles, oyster sauce, and bean sprouts are easiest to find at an Asian grocery store.

Pad Thai

1 pound of chicken or 1 block firm tofu (yellow on the outside)

½ c. green onions (chives)

4 cloves garlic or 3 T. minced garlic

2 T. oil

3 eggs (beaten)

Rice noodles (8 ounces)

1/3 c. oyster sauce

1/3 c. vinegar

1/3 c. sugar

½ c. chopped peanuts

1 c. bean sprouts

Limes

Directions: 

Cut chicken or tofu into small cubes. Cut green onions (chives) into 1 inch pieces. Chop garlic.

Mix oyster sauce, vinegar, and sugar together in a small bowl.  Set aside.

Put oil in wok. Sauté 2 tablespoons of the garlic. Add chicken and cook until done or tofu until hard. Remove tofu or chicken from wok, but leave the oil.

Cook noodles in boiling water for about 5 minutes depending on how soft you want them.

Sauté remaining tablespoon of garlic in oil. Cook in 3 eggs.

In wok, stir in cooked noodles, sauce mixture, peanuts, tofu or chicken, bean sprouts, and chives. Cook 3-4 minutes.

Serve with fresh bean sprouts, lime juice, more crushed peanuts, and crushed red pepper. Yum!

 

Could this be THE Thai Tuesday?

This could be the meeting.  If not this week, then the next meeting will most likely be the meeting. The meeting where the Thai Adoption Board will officially approve us to adopt our kids.  We have been waiting over a year for this approval and we are so very close to receiving it. First approval they call it.  As I have explained before on this blog, once we get this approval there will be another round of paperwork, another immigration approval and then we will get travel dates!

We are getting close!!

Tonight I made Pad Thai, one of our favorites.

I started with this:

 

And ended with this:

This Thai Tuesday we are praying that the board would review our case and give it the approval it needs so that we can travel to Thailand and bring our children home.  Will you pray with us?

Amazing Gifts

Some of you might remember that the end of last year we were awarded a grant through Lifesong for Orphans.  It was a matching grant.  They would match dollar for dollar what people gave to us up to $2,500.  Well, I put the information out on my blog, but haven't really done a whole lot else with it.  Within the first month of us receiving the grant, we had received $1,500 and were thrilled with the way God was providing.  We had checked the account a few times this year, but the balance remained at $1,500.  Earlier this month, we decided to check it again as we are working to get together the remaining balance of our adoption fee and much to our surprise we had exactly $2,500 in our account.  Which means we will receive the full matching grant of $2,500.  We needed a random amount, $939 and some change, and that was exactly what someone anonymously gave to us!  Wow!  Friends, God is so faithful to provide! 

Another really cool thing about this gift is when we found out about it.  The person actually gave the gift in April, but we didn't see it until just a couple of weeks ago, the same day we later found out our car needs a new transmission.  God knew that on that very day we would need a reminder of His provision and that nothing catches Him off guard. 

And while we are talking about matching grants, I don't think I've mentioned on this blog yet, that we were told about another matching grant that we should apply for through Brittany's Hope Foundation.  We were thrilled to learn that we received a $2,000 matching grant through this organization and even more thrilled to learn that some very dear people in our lives wanted to give to match the whole grant, $2,000.  We didn't even have a chance to say anything about this grant because it was matched as fast as we received it! 

I don't know where you are at in your journey, but if you are reading this and finances are keeping you from stepping out and pursuing adoption, please know that where God guides, He provides!  He is the one with the biggest heart for the fatherless.  He is the One who wants to set the lonely in families (Psalm 68:5-6).

His Birthday

Less than three weeks after our little girl turned three, our little boy turned four.  They are just over 11 months apart.  What a fun June we are going to have next year and every year after that!! 

This year for his birthday, the hubs and I went out for Thai food. Imagine that, us going out for Thai food!  And what would a blog post of mine be without pictures of some delicious Thai food!  I had some amazing mango curry and the hubs had chicken with peanut sauce that was okay.

 

After dinner, we decided since it was his birthday we better get some ice cream, or more accurately Italian ice. We want him to know someday that we celebrated his life even when he wasn't with us.

Two places that we can't wait to take our kids when they are home.  We dreamed about what it will be like to have him home. What will he like to eat?  What is his personality like?  Is he friendly, shy, quiet? Does he like ice cream?  Has he ever had ice cream?

We decided to send him some little construction trucks.  What little boy doesn't like trucks?  We also sent him an outfit, maybe more for his foster mom than for him.

 

We are longing for him to be home with us driving these little trucks through our backyard, digging up dirt and making roads for them out of sticks and stones. Until then, we hope that he is having fun with them in Thailand.  Someday little man, someday soon we are coming for you.  We love you more than you could possibly know and we are longing for you to be home with us.

Her Birthday

Last month our little girl had a birthday, she turned three-years-old.  In May we sent care packages over, so we went ahead and sent a few small things as birthday presents.  Its a tricky thing to only buy items that will fit in a gallon Ziploc bag, weigh no more than a pound, and are relatively flat.  We actually bought each of the kids something that was too much for the bags, so we had to scale back and find things that would fit what is allowed.  

We found this sweet little baby doll with an extra outfit.

And decided to send clothes for the first time.

 

We also got a few birthday blower things and a camera to include and managed to fit it all in.

 

We found a sweet card with stickers and wrote a little note. 

Sometimes it feels like a dream.  There are two kids on the other side of the world, that call us Mommy and Daddy.  Two kids on the other side of the world that we long to call Son and Daughter. Someday our dream will come true.  We hold on to this hope.  Someday, hopefully next year, we will celebrate birthdays with her in our laps, we will be able to tell her face to face how very much we love her.  Until then, our care packages, pictures, and little notes will have to do.

 

 

We love you baby girl, and we are coming for you soon!

 

Thai Tuesday

Its been a little while since I've written. It is difficult to put into words all that has gone on in my heart this past month. June was quite a full month for us with lots of traveling. There was a fingerprinting trip, funeral trip, new baby trip, an anniversary trip.....oh how I long for the day I can tell you about our adoption trip.  I have a feeling that is going to be one of the best trips of my life!!

Both of our children also had birthdays in the month of June.  Last year, when we first found out about them, we thought there was a pretty good chance that they would be with us by their birthdays, but their birthdays have come and gone and still no word of travel. This was hard.  This is hard. They are not two and three years old anymore, they are three and four.  Three and four.  They are learning and growing.  Without us.  This is hard.

Today is Tuesday.  Tuesday night in America means that it is Wednesday morning in Thailand. And this Wednesday morning in Thailand there is a group of people called the Thai Adoption Board that are meeting and reviewing cases of children and families. It is at one of these meetings that our children's files and our file will be reviewed and we will be given official approval to adopt them.  We are praying earnestly that at this meeting lots of families will get approval and that we would be one of them.

All of our traveling has left our refrigerator empty so, for Thai Tuesday tonight, we picked up a rotisserie chicken and made rice and corn to go with it.  In Chiang Mai, they sell these chickens at little stands along the side of the road along with sticky rice, it was one of my favorite quick dinners to stop and pick up.  They were SO good.  One of the things that makes this meal for us is the chicken dipping sauce, you can buy it in the Asian isle of most grocery stores and even Wal-Mart. So, next time you don't know what to have for dinner, and especially if it is a Tuesday, grab a bottle of sauce and a chicken and say a prayer for our kids and that they would be able to come home soon.

I have several posts stirring in my heart that I hope to type up soon....what we sent our kids for their birthdays, a challenging John Piper sermon I read on the beach during our anniversary trip, and an amazing gift we received, to name a few.  Thanks for journeying along with us, especially on Thai Tuesdays.