Undone

There is no God like Jehovah! There is no God like Jehovah. There is no God like Jehovah. There is no God like Jehovah! Behold He comes! Riding on the clouds! Shining like the sun! At the trumpet call. Lift your voice! It's the year of Jubilee! And out of Zion's hill salvation comes!

I am undone. Unworthy. Unzipped--to say the very least. Exposed. Humbled and awed. I see miracles in my life all the time. Some people explain them away as coincidences. I, in fact, find myself doing this very thing from time to time. Our fee to list with our particular adoption organization is 2,500 dollars. Of course, there are other fees. Legal fees. Potential medical fees. Travel costs. But the initial fee is 2,500 dollars. Keep that in mind. It becomes very important later on in this story.

When we were in Oregon we were incredibly blessed by some friends of my husband's family. We've entered into this adoption on faith and faith alone. Some people can pay ten or twenty thousand dollars for a child and not think twice about it. We are not those people. We are the kind of people who still own our home in southern California. We are the people who send 550 dollars back each month to cover the difference between what we rent it out for and what our mortgage actually is. We are the kind of people who decided that it was important for me to be home with our son when we moved to Utah. So we are the kind of people who happen to be kind of poor. Don't get me wrong, we can afford to eat. We can even afford cable and wireless Internet. But we don't have a surplus of cash lying around waiting to finance an adoption. So, about a month ago, we were blessed mightily by friends. I've met them three times now. They came to my wedding. They came to our rescue when our car broke down in southern Washington several years ago. And they came to my mother-in-law's birthday dinner in September. Just before they left, we found a check for 500 dollars sitting on our luggage.

They have a huge heart for people in ministry. I felt blessed. Humbled. Undone. Unworthy. We put their money, as well as the money Troy made for speaking at his dad's church that weekend, into the account I opened strictly as an adoption fund.

October is Pastor Appreciation Month. I knew this in the back of my head but I certainly wasn't expecting anything. Today our church recognized our ministry. A member of our church made an announcement and called Troy and me forward. (Side note: I'm still having eye problems and think I may be allergic to my contacts. I have an appointment with an optometrist tomorrow and I've been wearing my glasses almost exclusively. BOY was I glad I'd decided to put my contacts in this morning. I am certainly glad I wasn't paraded in front of the congregation in my eight year old glasses.) We went forward and, at this point, I was expecting a gift certificate to a restaurant or Cold Stone or something. Which would have been perfectly wonderful and incredibly appreciated. Instead, Jim started talking about how the congregation had decided to help us with our adoption and that they had collected...and okay so at this point I'm thinking there might be a couple hundred dollars in that envelope and I'm starting to feel really overwhelmed by the church's generosity...two thousand dollars.

TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS!

Our church is not that big. Our church is not brimming with millionaires. We have only been here for eleven months. But our church is filled with incredible people. Our church makes us feel like, where ministry itself and personal relationships are concerned, we've been here for much longer than a year. Our church serves a big God.

500 dollars from a family friend + 2,000 dollars from our extremely generous church body= 2,500 dollars which just happens to be that listing fee that I told you about back at the beginning.

And, because I am a silly woman, I had a hard time holding back my tears. I managed to regain composure after just a couple tears squeaked out of my eyes but I was overwhelmed. Blessed. Unworthy. Undone.

This is not a coincidence. This is a big, giant, almighty God patting us on the back and saying, "I said I'd provide. Here is your filing fee. It's a free gift from me through my people."

Most of the people who read my blog are fellow believers. I praise God for you and for the ministries that you have in your churches across this nation. But to those who may have stumbled across this blog and don't necessarily believe in my big, giant, almighty God, let this be a testament to his existence. TWENTY FIVE HUNDRED dollars was donated to us in the course of a month. This just happens to be the very number we needed to move to the next step of this journey. If you don't believe in miracles, that's okay, but you really ought to start keeping an eye out for those God ordained coincidences.