Well, this week was not the easiest in our adoption process. As many of you know, we should have travelled to meet and bring our daughter home in late April/ early May. That got pushed back to early June when the President put the country on international lockdown through May 31st. However, last Tuesday (May 19) Mili’s foster family text us and asked if we were free to chat with them.
“We wanted you to hear it from us, so that we could assure you and answer any questions you may have. The president has just extended the lockdown through August 31st** but we want you to know that we love Mili so much and that we are going to take the best care of her whether you come here tomorrow or months from now.” -Mili’s foster dad
How could a few sentences be so bitter yet so sweet all at once. It was such a blow, like a rug being ripped from under me and yet there was peace knowing she is with them.
I am currently reading through the Bible in historical order and the Lord intervened that morning because my quiet time was focused on the story of Hannah and Samuel. I am very familiar with this story, and it is one that is dear to me, but I had never applied the lessons God taught me from it to our adoption process. I was reminded that God can give me patience. I can grieve, and be broken, but ultimately I submit those things to the Lord and I can be patient. If you know me, you know I am a doer. I get things done and I love to make things happen. But I can’t do anything to get my daughter. I can’t fly to get her, I can’t change the laws, I can’t sign paperwork, I can’t drive (trust me I checked- I drive 57 hours and I make it to the middle of the Amazon and then all paths stop lol). All I can do is be patient and allow God to be faithful. It will be God who cares for her and protects her. It is God who will unite our family and it is God who will sustain our family.
Even though I read that in the morning, the call still shook me and I have ebbed and flowed back and forth all week constantly praying to be brought back to that place of patience and trust. This morning my quiet time was again in Samuel, however Samuel is now a prophet and judge over Israel and with the Philistines subdued “Samuel took a stone and set it up…and called it Ebenezer; for he said, “Till now the Lord has helped us.”
What a powerful statement “Till now the Lord has helped us” and I know that is help is not ceasing. We do not know when we will be able to get Mili and many things are unclear but we are trusting in the Lord because he is faithful.
Here I raise my Ebenezer
Here there by Thy great help I’ve come
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure
Safely to arrive at home
Jesus sought me when a stranger
Wandering from the fold of God
He, to rescue me from danger
Interposed His precious blood – Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
Prayer Requests:
- That there would be a miracle and we could go before August 31 (which also happens to be when our paperwork expires).
- For Mili’s foster family to know God
- For God to sustain the foster family (taking care of two babies who are a month apart and working can be difficult- especially when you are not allowed to leave the house!)
- For our family to continue to be patient and trusting
- That God would use this extra time to provide the finances needed to complete the adoption and travel to Colombia.
** We don’t know all the reasons behind the President’s very strict rules but some of the reasons we have been provided with are mainly due to them still recovering from decades of civil war and so they do not have a robust hospital system and it can become easily overwhelmed
Bixler Adoption Journey 