The Beginning

I don't know if the title "The Beginning" is appropriate because this is a process I can now tell God has been working in my life and Shale's for several years, but I couldn't think of anything else that better described where we are.  I haven't written on this blog in almost 2 years and a lot has changed since then.  However, to save a long post of catching up I will just pretend that I am with a close friend and skip to the point of this post.  In August I was sitting at my parents house and felt like God was telling me that we should move forward with adoption in December.  I had no clue why December.  In fact it went against what I had thought was originally God's timing, which was another year.  However, I told Shale and he said ok (I honestly don't know if he believed it would really happen then).  However, in December a series of events took place that solidified that God was indeed telling us to walk forward in adoption. 

Last week we met with an adoption agency and the only thing I can say is that it was absolutely overwhelming.  Imagine praying for something for a greater portion of your life and now having the meeting that would literally be the beginning of the answers to your prayers.  However, once we had the meeting I realized what an overwhelming process it still is.  First you have what feels like a million decisions to make.  Then on top of that you learn about the cost of everything, which let me tell you is not cheap!  After that you learn, oh yeah, that it may take 2-3 years.  If you know me you know I joke that the "theme of my life is patience" so I should have seen that wait coming.

After being asked by several people how the meeting went and how they can pray I decided to start the blog back up.  I'm hoping that it will serve as an example of what it means to feel called by God to do something and to walk in that decision.  Even equally important I'm hoping it will be a way to communicate our prayer requests through this process because honestly I've never felt like I needed prayer more in my life.  So thank you in advance for your prayers and your love.

Prayer Requests:
1.  Pray that God would be glorified through everything that happens during this process
2.  Pray that God would clearly show us what agency to work with
3.  Pray for the child God has already chosen for us
4.  Pray for finances (specifically about $25,000)  that God would provide this in His ways and His timing
5.  Pray specifically for the first $6,000 (this is what is needed to get a home study done and sign with an agency which is our first step in the process)
6.  Pray for a house, we currently live in a 1 bedroom condo and we would need a house with more than one room in order to complete the adoption process (a requirement) we have been searching for a while but haven't found one in our budget that is also in the area of town that we fell God is calling us to go to
7.  Pray for the birthparents of our child that God might use us to show them Him
8.  Pray for Shale and I that God would give us amazing patience, peace and guidance
9.  While Shale and I feel called to domestic adoption (at this point, obviously God can change that) please pray for the orphans in Eastern Europe, the picture with this post broke my heart when I read the statistics