{ Baby Love is on the way! }

"You crown the year with Your goodness, 

and Your paths drip with abundance." 

Psalm 65:11

Words just don't seem to do justice to all that is in our hearts right now... These last days and months have been SO full, I hardly know where to begin. 

For those who have not heard our wonderful news, we are expecting our little miracle Baby Love in early October! Today I am 14 weeks pregnant and Edgar and I can hardly contain our joy and delight as we prepare to welcome this little one into the world. 

Also, we are buying a HOME here in Dallas! Read on to find out more details... 

This pregnancy came as one of the best surprise gifts we've ever received. Surprise? Well yes, we were actually quite surprised when we found out on January 26th that we were expecting a baby! 

Early last fall, we worked with a wonderful fertility specialist who confirmed that we are indeed healthy and very fertile, and we did two fertility treatments with her clinic. Choosing to go forward with these treatments was another deep layer of surrender for us. We felt the Lord was asking us to be willing to let Him move in any way, shape or form He chose and not limit Him to how we wanted the story to be written. 

Although both treatments went textbook perfect, they did not result in pregnancy... 

And I was borderline devastated. 

These two unsuccessful fertility treatments were extremely hard for me to deal with in my heart. I found myself thinking, "I can't believe I am in this situation. I can't believe this is my life! I never thought I would end up here..." Have you ever found yourself walking through a hardship that you had never imagined? or asking God, "Ok, what in the world was that all about?" 

Yet for Edgar and I, this was yet another pivotal season of faith and hope and choosing to anchor ourselves into the rock-solid refuge of our Heavenly Father. We made the choice to worship and praise Him not for everything but IN everything. It was hard, but we chose to rest and delight in His perfect plan that certainly didn't make any sense to us. 

And so we stepped boldly into 2014 - which marked exactly 4 years of trying to get pregnant and crying out to God for children - full of hope and faith, full of zeal and dreams for our future. 

After ALL of that, when I woke up on January 26th and randomly decided to take a pregnancy test, I gotta be honest guys, I wasn't exactly expecting to find out that we are having a BABY! 

"We went through fire and through water; 

but You have brought us out to rich fulfillment." 

Psalm 66:12

And yet, as we have learned to do so many times before in our long journey, we rejoiced with such joy on that day and we also wept with great sorrow. Because on that same day, our dear friends had to say goodbye to their precious little one long before they wanted to - they miscarried at 19 weeks... To find out both of these life-altering pieces of news within 24 hours was such a monumental exercise in trusting God's sovereign plan. 

A few days later we were able to attend a small ceremony with our friends as they surrendered their daughter to the Lord and chose to walk through the valley of the shadow of death with brave hearts full of hope and faith. We admire them so much. We know their deep pain from personal experience and we honor their journey.

So we all trusted the Lord with our babies together... Having walked through two miscarriages before, it was really an active exercise of our will to daily - sometimes hourly - trust the Lord with this little life growing in my womb, knowing and believing that He is the author and sustainer of life. 

"He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, 

but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, 

and being fully convinced that what He had promised 

He was also able to perform. " 

Romans 4:20-21

The 14 weeks of this pregnancy have flown by in many ways, and here we are finding ourselves in early April, with a contract on a HOME! This was yet another sudden and delightful surprise. As long as things continue to proceed well, we should be home owners for the 3rd time in mid-May! It is an amazing thought to realize this is the home we will bring our new baby home to...it just takes my breathe away. 

Update on our ADOPTION AND FOSTER PLANS: 

The major slow-down in Uganda with international adoptions has continued to remain in effect. There are many complicated political reasons why this door is possibly starting to close, but the bottom line for us is: we still feel like we should keep holding on to the plan to adopt our little girl from Uganda until there is nothing left to hold on to. Towards the end of this year we will evaluate where the Uganda program is at and decide at that point how to proceed - keep waiting, or change plans to adopt from a different country.

In addition, now that we are expecting a baby early October, we will have to postpone any plans to foster until after the baby is at least 6 months old. We had already begun training classes and paperwork to get licensed through the state of Texas, but it will be at least a year until we reevaluate our course of action for fostering.

And so, our "adoption fund" savings account that so many precious people have so generously contributed to is waiting for us, waiting to help bring our daughter home safely to our arms... 

In all of these things, with every one of the children that God is going to bring into our home in the years to come, through loss and through gain, through little and through much, through trials and through joy, we trust Him completely and entirely! His plan is perfect. 

Friends, thank you for rejoicing with us 

in the sweetness of this new season! 

(many thanks to our wonderful new brother-in-law John Chambers for spontaneously snapping these photos at a recent family dinner!) 

If you believe...

Is anyone else having a hard time realizing that 2013 has come to an end?

I sure am!

When I sat down to ponder my life and wait on the Lord for fresh promises and words of hope at the end of 2012, I had no idea all that would transpire over the coming 365 days. Honestly, if you would have told me what would happen in 2013 for Edgar and I, there's a good chance I would not have believed you...

   I wouldn't have believed that my husband would get laid off from his job...
   ...that we would have to sell the lovely home we had just built...
   ...that we would leave [yet another] precious community of amazing friends...
   ...that we would move back "home" to Dallas...
   ...that our adoption would be postponed longer than we ever imagined...
   ...that we would get to be part of our beloved Gateway Church again...
   ...that we would hear God tell us to begin fostering...!
   ...that we would get a puppy...!

This year has been full of some of the highest highs and the lowest lows we have ever walked through. But for each goodbye, there has been a hello. For each closed door, there has been an open door just around the corner. For each tear, there have been smiles to far outweigh the heartache.

And on this first day of January, the first day of this brand new year, I can't help but realize how God is shifting things in our lives. He has brought Edgar and I into a place where we are doing the very things we said we would "NEVER" do! That would be a good theme for us for 2013: shifting and shaking everything that could possibly be shaken and bringing us into Never Never Land. And in the shifting, in that testing, He does new and beautiful things that we can hardly comprehend.

So we have had a few new things going on over here... The first is that we did indeed get a brand new little puppy! She is the biggest surprise of our lives because Edgar and I were the couple that had said we would "never" get a dog. And I can hardly even grasp how it happened, all I know is that we saw her and instantly fell in love and knew she was supposed to be our dog. And trust me, we were just as shocked as our family and close friends were! We named her Schatje which means "little treasure" in Dutch, and our sweet little Schatje is the gift we never knew we needed.

But of far greater significance...we have begun the process of becoming foster parents...!

"What?!" you say? That's exactly what we said too when we first realized it. Become foster parents? Who in their right mind wants to do that? Fostering was yet another thing I "never" wanted to do. Can you imagine loving children as your very own only to have them ripped from you with barely a moments notice? Fostering children sounded like the most profoundly painful heartache and I was not in the least bit interested in voluntarily putting myself through that kind of pain...

But God has a way of shifting things in our lives and hearts in such a strategic way and He brings it all about in His perfect timing. From where I sit now, having a heart freshly shattered by His love (and also partly because of this book), I cannot imagine being more excited and passionate about fostering than I am now. What a precious opportunity to love on children, to help them find healing and to shepherd their precious hearts for however long God gives them to us.

A few weeks ago we began the process of "foster-to-adopt" with a local agency and this month we will start the required 30+ hours of required training. What does "foster-to-adopt" mean? We will take a child or a sibling group into our home while their parents work on meeting whatever requirements CPS has set up for them to earn their kids back. The average time foster children stay in a foster home under this scenario is 12-18 months. If at the end of this time the parents have been unable/unwilling to live up to the requirements CPS gave them, their parental rights will be terminated and we will be able to adopt the child/children.

Are we still adopting our little child from Uganda? YES. Though the wait has become longer than anyone anticipated and several families above us have dropped out of the program (putting us now at #21 on the waiting list) we feel like God has told us to stick it out and continue trusting Him with Uganda.

With all that said, my mind short circuits whenever I try to picture what 2014 could look like. I can't help but think that our God wants to do so much more in each of our lives this coming year than ever before. I believe He wants to pour Himself out in greater ways than we have ever experienced, that He wants to give us fresh faith and hope in who He is. I want each of us to believe Him more than we ever dreamed possible. 

But that is often our problem: belief.  Have you ever struggled with belief? with faith? with hope? Perhaps because you have been disappointed when you hoped for something...or maybe God didn't seem to come through for you when you cried out to Him. I don't know why you  might struggle with belief from time to time, but I can say that I'm right there with you in the struggle.

My constant prayer is "Lord, I do believe! and please help my unbelief!" Have you ever prayed that?

Mary and Martha believed Jesus would heal their brother. The disciples believed Jesus would heal Lazarus. Yet oddly, Jesus delayed in arriving on the scene. After waiting until it was "too late", Jesus told His disciples in John 11, "Lazarus died. And I am glad for your sakes that I wasn't there. You're about to be given new grounds for believing..." Sometimes we can't explain why God delays in answering our prayers or why He goes about it not directly but by taking the long way around, but I do know that no matter what you are believing God for, He is faithful and He will always do what He says He will do.

Instead of giving them an instant miracle, Jesus takes Mary and Martha and His disciples on the long way around. To frustrate and disappoint them? NO! To set the stage for glorifying the Father and building their faith. The faith and awe and adoration that grew in their hearts for Jesus after seeing Lazarus raised from the dead was so much richer and deeper and eternal than if Jesus had simply showed up "on time" and healed Lazarus while he was yet living.

"Then Jesus looked her in the eye, 'Didn't I tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"' (John 11:40) Friends, look with me into the eyes of Jesus and let's hear Him telling us that... Let's put our faith in the One who makes all things new, the One who brings the prodigals home and sets the captives free, the One who places the lonely in families and heals the brokenhearted. Let's break out of our "never" boxes and let Him do fresh things, new things in our lives. Don't you want to believe Him for more this year than ever before??!

From our little family to yours, we wish you love, we wish you peace, we wish you joy in this New Year as we celebrate all that means most to us. Our reason to celebrate and rejoice in these holy-days has been because Jesus Christ humbled Himself and came to earth to ransom us and restore life and hope to all of humanity. It is because of His life that we now have life, and not just any life, but an ABUNDANT life of great joy and hope.

We have hope in our future because we have hope in Him. 

Here's to 2014!