good design

From Mexico, Canada, St. Louis, Washington DC and Charlotte, the Wilson and Oster clans connected for the celebration of Christmas. 

Beginning in Blowing Rock with the Wilson clan, it was a wonderful time together of hiking, painting, praying, antiquing, strength-finding, dreaming, and feasting! Thanks mom and dad for all you did to make this a wonderful holiday!

Day after Christmas we headed to Roanoke for time with the Osters. It was a great time of resting, game playing, talking, cooking, and loving on our niece, Ella.  

They very thoughtfully surprised us with the two gifts pictured on the right. i can't even capture the flutter of my heart in opening both of these gifts. Anna and Sarah, the sisters, had the softest blanket embroidered with "Pequeno O" on it (gasp) and Tom and Sherry put together a frame with a picture of Peru drawn by Tom and it reads "I'm growing in my mommy and daddy's heart." It's our sonogram and i treasure it. 

PH and I took advantage of the time off work to dive into some more paperwork. We both wrote our autobiographies, completed the homestudy history, and are gathering together documents for the financial statements.  there were low and high moments in working on these documents, low moments include questions like: applicant's skin tone, build, weight, childcare plans, beliefs and values, budget sheets and spending habits. i don't know another expectant family that had to answer those questions. maybe they should have too also, who knows, but all we know is that each time we dive into the work, we have to change our mind frame and take this on as our journey to our child, we need to put our head down and go after them well, knowing that this is just a piece of the process for our family, for this fantastic God given journey of adoption. 

one morning of devotionals with my Wilson family, we discussed gratitude and reflected on what we may feel worthy of praise and thankfulness from the last year. Stephen encouraged us to think about PRAISE as a reflection on God's character and person to us and THANKFULNESS as the actual showing up in our life. with a bit of a trembling voice but an assured heart, i praised God that He is the GREAT designer, that He has created GREAT plans for us and others. I thanked God that Stephen and I now more than ever feel a part of that privileged plan when we were disrupted from our plan (graduate, get married, get great jobs, birth children, buy picket fence, so on and so forth) and led to adoption. I thank God for the reminder that He is control and of His DEEP love for His children, us and the orphans. I have never felt more lucky b/c with this disruption of my plans for the world, we have been gently led to God's plan for this one little family. 

Thank you God. We praise your GOOD design. We will take on this paperwork with lifted spirits and zealous hearts to unfold your plan. 

As you celebrate and usher in the New Year, I hope too you have a chance to reflect and praise.