This is parts of a talk I gave to our ladies' group at church,
I thought I would share it here, if you're interested.
(the horse has nothing to do with it!!)
Learning to
say YES, when God asks us to do something difficult, has been a learning process
for me. It can be rather scary, jumping
into the unknown, but I have learned that God can be trusted, and when he asks,
we better say YES. Hebrews 4:7 says,
Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts. Andy and I have been married for 18 years
now, and in those years we have had many opportunities to say YES to the
adventure God has called us to. Some
have been big things and some little, sometimes we didn't say YES when we
should have, but hopefully we are getting better at it!
I remember
when I was a newlywed we lived in a little single wide trailer, and I worked at our small town grocery store. There was a lady there who I worked with,
and she had a hard life.
Her family was very poor, and she was working hard to provide for them
but her no account husband wasn't helping things much. She would tell me about how her daughter just
wanted to be able to eat a big piece of meat for her birthday because they
never had enough money for meat, and a small town grocery store salary didn't
provide much. Well, I always kind of
felt like I should be witnessing to her, but wasn't ever quite sure how. One day I remember we were putting food in
the refrigerator case, and I could just tell very strongly that God wanted me
to tell her about Him, but I chickened out and didn't say anything. I have always regretted that so much! Not too long after that her husband wanted to
move so away they went. She told me as I
said goodbye that she was a better person for knowing me, but that didn't help
me feel much better, because being a better person wasn't going to get her into
heaven. I learned a big lesson there
though. When God asks you to do
something, you need to say YES, whether it's scary or not!
About five
years later we were back living in the same small town again, raising support to be
missionaries with UIM Aviation in Tucson, Arizona. We had one son, Luke, and he was three years
old. We wanted more children very badly,
but God wasn't sending any by the regular route, and so we were about to start
on the adventure of "special delivery" babies, through adoption. We had no money for expensive international
adoption or private agency adoption, since Andy had just finished college and
we were trying to raise support to be missionaries! Then I heard that if you were open to
adopting bi-racial children, you could adopt much more easily and inexpensively
because there was less demand, which sounds bad but it's the way it was. Back then, in 2001, I only knew of two other
families who had adopted bi-racial children, and no one who had adopted a full
black child. But God was working in our
hearts. It didn't take too long for us
to realize that we just wanted children, it didn't matter what color their skin
was! I am so thankful that we said YES
when God asked us to adopt children of other races, each one of them is a
treasure and our family now has ancestors from every continent except
Australia!
Fast forward
another five years- we were now living in Tucson, Arizona, where Andy was an
airplane mechanic for UIM Aviation.
Tucson was a difficult place for me to live. We lived
on one side of town, near the airport, but our church was 45 minutes away, on
the other side of town. So getting
together with any of the ladies from the church was difficult. Andy, on the other hand, loved his work at
the hangar and got along great with all the other mechanics there. This caused a strain in our relationship. We lived out in the desert, where it was very
difficult to grow anything because of the dry conditions and poor soil, so
although I was trying to "bloom where I was planted", I was having a
difficult time of it. The dry desert
left me feeling very dry inside as well.
In the summer of 2006, we had a mission conference with the other UIM
missionaries in Nebraska, and after talking with a friend there, and
hearing of her life in Mexico, I got the wild idea, "Maybe we should move
to Mexico?" I brought it up to Andy
on the long drive back to Arizona, and we talked of little else the whole way
back. God was leading us. Our mission director decided it would be good
for us to go down there and help them build a hangar of our own to use, since
we had just been renting space at the international airport. So a few months later we were on our
way! Learning Spanish, building the
hangar, and doing our best to encourage the other missionaries down there
filled our days. Although life in Mexico
wasn't the easiest, with the language barriers and the danger from the drug
war, we really loved our time there, and I'm so glad we said YES when God moved
in our hearts to move down. Missionaries
are just regular people, and I think sometimes God asks us to be missionaries
because of the lessons he wants to teach us personally, not because of all the
people he wants to reach through us. He
doesn't need us to accomplish his purposes and introduce people to Him, but he
does decide to use us sometimes, if we are willing, and that is a great
privilege.
In the
winter of 2011-2012, my life changed when I started having seizures. My health was not good for most of 2012, I
had little energy and many ups and downs.
But right in the middle of that both Andy and I started feeling God
tugging at our hearts that we needed to do more for him. The adoption agency in Arizona that we used
to adopt DJ and SJ would post pictures online of hard-to-place kids from
time to time, and in the summer of 2012 they posted a picture of a little girl
named Emily, who had special needs. I
could not get her out of my mind. Did
God want us to adopt a special needs child?
But what about my health issues?
We already had five children that were keeping me quite busy! Then, we started feeling that God wanted us
to adopt through the state foster care system.
Now that was scary! We had never
adopted through the state before, and although the adoption would be free we
were scared of having the state involved in our family life. All my objections were met by a verse or a
song that God would bring to my mind.
Finally after a few months of indecision while God worked on our hearts,
we knew we had to say YES, we had no choice.
I remember the day I put the application to adopt through the state
foster care system in the mail, I felt such a sense of relief- I had obeyed, I
had said YES, even though I was scared.
That fall we took the required 10 weeks of training classes, and then we
had our homestudy done the following spring.
Everything takes way longer when you are adopting through the state
instead of privately, but finally, in the early summer of 2013, we started
actually inquiring about girls that were waiting for a home. For one reason or another it was harder to
find one that would be a match for our family than it seemed like it should
be! We had several matches that did not
work out, but in the fall of 2013 our social worker told us about a 6 month old
girl that we should submit our homestudy for.
A 6 month old child was very rare in the state adoption system, our
social worker only saw them every 3-4 years.
When she emailed us the picture of this little girl, the minute I saw
her I thought, oh yes, she's our daughter!
I had searched through hundreds of photo listings, looking for her, but
when I saw her, I just knew. What we
didn't know was that it would be another year of waiting on slow social workers
before we would be able to meet her for the first time. I am so very glad we said YES when God asked
us to adopt through the state. Miss E is
so perfect for our family and she is a treasure. What a joy to be able to be her Mom and Dad!
Now, this
spring, I am learning to say YES when God asks me to trust and have joy in the
midst of epilepsy. In March and then
again a couple weeks ago I have had more seizures, and I'm not really sure
why. Living with seizures is not real
fun, for me or for the rest of the family.
It's not how I always envisioned my life turning out! Being a mom of six children and not being
able to drive for months at a time is a pain, how can I be a good mom if I
can't take my kids to where they need to go?
There is fear of the future and 'what if' questions plague me- I don't
want to die young! But if I spend my
time worrying and complaining and wishing God was doing something different in
my life, that's not saying YES to God, is it?
Right now, the YES God is asking me to say isn't to a new exciting
adventure, it's saying YES to a life of joy and rest in God's perfect plan,
even when the trials he brings into my life don't make sense. Living life with seizures is not what I would
have chosen for myself, but it is what God has given me. God can always be trusted!
I don't know
what adventure God has next for us, the first 18 years of our marriage have
been quite eventful, but the verse God gave us when we were first married still
applies today-
Deuteronomy
31:8--
The LORD
himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you or
forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be
discouraged.
