Surrender, Obedience, Blessings...

Late October/November last year, 

my husband and I were sitting in church listening to

a fabulous sermon by our pastor, JP Jones.

I remember the sermon being about

our purpose and our calling and what we are

responsible for as committed followers of Christ.

It was in that sermon that the Lord

spoke to my husband and I in a very clear way.

He was calling us to be adoptive parents.

Over the last 10ish years,

we have struggled with infertility.

We have been through the range of emotions

over the past decade.

During this time that my first blog was born

LovingPrettyThings

It was a blog started on the superficial and generic.

It morphed into a place where I could

work out the anger, pain and frustrations

I was feeling at the time.

The Lord used this avenue to

speak to me through other bloggers.

This then planted the seed of friendship that

over the past 6 years have developed deep roots and

establish a line of communication

with Him that I had severed out of stubbornness and anger.

My dear friend, Lissa

wrote me a long letter in our early friendship

and taught me about surrendering.

It was a foreign concept and *exactly* what I needed to hear.

It took many many years for me to fully 

SURRENDER.

Surrender my dreams, my marriage, my parenting,

my friendships, my activities.

Surrender to His will.

To His way.

Completely trusting that HE is in control of my life.

Romans 8:7

The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; 

it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.

Cut to February this year.

We have researched, prayed and lead to

amazing people to walk along side us, doing the Lord's work

to bring another child into our family.

A prayer that has been answered after so many years of

praying, aching and yearning for our family to grow.

We were in a world of adoption that was completely unknown.

We knew we were called.

And that's all we needed to know.

Obedience.

Not always knowing the path,

but trusting the path is there by walking in faith.

Psalm 128:1

Blessed are all who fear the Lord, 

who walk in obedience to him.

And then, we are surprised.

SHOCKED.

in AWE.

I am excited to share that we are pregnant.

14 weeks.

Blessings.

We knew that 2014 would grow our family,

our hearts with adoption.

But, again, the Lord had other plans.

As soon as we surrendered to His will,

obeyed His instruction,

the blessings abound in unimaginable ways.

Deuteronomy 28:2

All these blessings will come on you 

and accompany you if you obey the Lord your God

Here is a bit of the journey over the years of our infertility:

Cry of My Heart

A Closed Door

Give...Grow

loo-key-me-uh

The fog has lifted

Refining our Infertility

Grateful