Now Faith...

Every week in Ethan's Pre-K curriculum that we are doing at home this year he has a memory verse.  He works pretty hard at them and has done really well.  One of the first few verses was Hebrews 11:1:

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."

Kind of a tough verse for a 4 year old, but he did pretty well memorizing that one.  He still remembers it, but Caden is the one that has latched onto this verse for some reason.  He only recites the first two words.


"Now faith."

Every morning when we go over Ethan's verse for the week, Caden runs up saying he knows his verse.  He then tells me his verse.

"Now faith."

The same verse everyday for about 3 months now.  He has also asked me what faith means.  I have told him that faith means trusting God.  Some of you might have a better operational definition of faith that can be understood by a two year old, but that is what I came up with on the spot, and he seems to get that.

I have thought that it was strange that he has hung onto this particular verse, and even just these two words for so long given how many other verses we have gone over.  There have been much simpler verses that certainly seem easier for a small child to understand, but this is the one that he keeps spouting off.

"Now faith."

I don't think it is an accident though.

I think God has given me a constant reminder in the form of my sweet 2 year old chasing me around all day telling me he knows his verse.  I need to be reminded that God has all of this under control.  Even my son knows that we are supposed to be trusting God.

We know how clear God has been in leading us in the adoption process.  He has given us so many confirmations along the way.  Yet I am very quick to forget all of it and completely stress out about how we are going to get it all done.  The paperwork is overwhelming.  The financial side is scary.  And when I have 3 kids under the age of 5 running through my house screaming and ripping the place apart I wonder if God picked the wrong mommy for this job.

I need to be reminded that I don't need to know all of the answers.  I will never know all of the answers, but God does.  I am not able to handle all of this on my own, but God certainly can.  God can handle all of the details, big and small.  My only job is to trust God.  Have faith in Him and His ability to accomplish everything that He has planned.  Now.  I am thankful that God knows exactly what I need to hear, when I need to hear it, and how to make sure I hear it over and over and over again.

Making Progress

We are making progress!!!  We still have a lot of work to do, but the week of Thanksgiving we sent in ALL of our agency paperwork.  We got an email last week saying they had received everything and requested our home study and that we should get a call from the social worker within 30 days to schedule the home study appointment.  I figured it would probably be a couple of weeks before we heard from them and that the appointment wouldn't actually take place until January or February, but we got a phone call the very next morning!!!  Our home study is scheduled for December 30!!!!  I just didn't think they would fit us in so quickly with Christmas and New Year's and everything coming up.  We are really excited to say the least.
We also sent off our fingerprints for our FBI clearances last week.  We still have quite a bit of work to do on our dossier before we are completely done with paperwork, but it is definitely nice to make some major progress.
Here are some pics we took of the boys with the FedEx pack as we sent it off to our agency.

Ethan is super excited.  Every time I mention to him that we are doing something that has something to do with the adoption, he asks if we are going to get the babies now.  :)  He thinks it is about time we go pick them up.  And yes, that's right, he only says "babies."  He even corrects me if I say baby and says "No Mommy, baby means there is only one.  There is more than one."  We will see if he is right.  (One time he told me we were getting 10, because we needed 5 more boys and 5 more girls.  I had to assure him that this time there would be no more than 2!)  That kid cracks me up.

Caden is still not entirely certain why we are so excited about this envelope.  We talk a lot about the baby, but he doesn't completely get it.  I think he will catch on when we get our referral and have an actual face to go with all of this talk.  He was happy to smile for a picture for mommy though.  :)

I couldn't leave you without a picture of Abbie and her newest trick.  She is not walking quite yet, but she is standing really well.  Isn't she cute?  I think so. :)  I can't believe that she is already 11 months old! This is going by entirely too fast.  She needs to slow down on all this growing up.