An Update and A (Short) Story

It's been almost two weeks since I last blogged. It's not intentional, but as always, we're busy, and there's just not time to sit down at my computer.

Last weekend we went to the beach with my sister's family, but I can't upload the pics to my computer. Patrick had the camera on some weird format, and he has to use a program on his computer (that I don't have) to convert them. We left last Friday, and it was raining buckets here. Which is great because we need every drop. It didn't rain much at the beach, but it was cool and windy. I stayed out of the water, but everyone else swam. The cool weather didn't seem to faze Andrew and Anthony in the least. The cool and windy weather didn't last long, and we're stuck back in the summer holding pattern. Summer is welcome in June, July, and August, but by the middle of September it starts to wear on you. I'm ready to see the temps drop consistently below 90 degrees.

We have to go get fingerprinted for USCIS again on Monday. This will be my seventh set of fingerprints for the adoption (if you count all the unreadable ones for the FBI).To be completely honest, the first two years of waiting, while not exactly easy, weren't hard. They were expected. But now that we've hit the two year mark, I find myself growing impatient. I want a referral, and Bulgaria doesn't seem to be handing out a whole lot of them here lately. Just when things seem to pick up momentum, it seems like everything comes to a halt again for one reason or another. I've been pretty optimistic up to this point, but I sometimes find myself wondering if we will ever actually get a referral. We've invested so much emotional energy, time, and money into this, and right now it's hard to see a light at the end of the tunnel. I know that the possibility of waiting three years is very real. Right now I'm praying for good news not just for us but for all the families waiting.

The other morning my sister-in-law, who just so happens to be Andrew's kindergarten teacher, sent me a video of him praying at his school's "See You At the Pole". His school is small. It has somewhere around 100 kids in K-12th grades. I was really proud to see him volunteer to pray. As I was watching the video, I teared up thinking that while he may not always be perfect, he loves Jesus, and that's really all that matters. I know he messes up, but I don't dwell on those things. I actually don't think about them much past the moment of correction. I don't remind him 1000 times a day of what he did wrong. And while I certainly do correct him, that is after all my job, I also choose to focus on the good that he does. It was through this line of thinking that God spoke to my heart. He reminded me that that's how He thinks about us . . . only in a much bigger, much better way. Sure we mess up, and He wants us to do right so there are moments of correction. But He's not sitting there waiting to reissue punishment every chance He gets. When He says we're forgiven He means it. When He says He forgets our sins He's not kidding. Maybe we should learn to do a little forgetting of our own.

Isaiah 43:25

New King James Version (NKJV)

25 “I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake;
And I will not remember your sins.