Be still my soul

"Be still my soul the Lord is on thy side. With patience bear thy cross of grief or pain."

I've had this song on repeat in my house and on my heart this week.

Be still my anxious, weary soul. The mountains of paperwork, the not-knowing-where-to-start, the missed photocopy, the wrong document, the simple mistake I can't believe I made, the racing against the clock to get everything in the mail.... they all make it seem like the world is against me. They make me question if the Lord really is on my side.

Then I'm listening and singing to this song and whispering the lyrics with watery eyes, "with patience bear thy cross of grief or pain."

It might seem silly to get so worked up over paperwork, but when paperwork is what's standing between you and your baby- it feels about as stressful as a war at your dining room table.

When it comes to paperwork and bureaucracy, John and I have a long standing history with little things going wrong. This week was no exception. I think we both woke up with clenched teeth and stiff shoulders today as we prepared to face another "battle" against the paperwork in an attempt to send our preliminary dossier to our agency. We absolutely had to get these documents in the mail TODAY, so we had a lot of anxiety about it.

The Lord is on your side. The Lord is on your side. The Lord is on your side.

I'll tell you what: I got a little pentecostal last night and actually laid my hands on that inches thick stack of paper. I prayed over that dossier all God's commands about orphan care. I prayed the Spirit's power to overrule any mistakes we made. And then I brought it upstairs to John and asked him to do the same.

This morning John brought it to our local Fedex counter.

Also this morning, I received an email from our agency explaining something I had misunderstood in the dossier instructions.

It was a bit of a heart-stopping moment as I realized that, had John already mailed it, we would be looking at weeks added onto our adoption wait.

I've never dialed so fast in my life. John answered, "Hey can I call you right back?"

Without breathing: "No!Ourdossierisn'tdonerightpleasetellmeyoudidn'tmailityet!Didyoumailit?"

I heard John muffle the phone and say to someone else, "Oh wait- sorry- I actually need that back."

He was handing our dossier over the Fedex counter when the phone rang.

Thank you God for preventing that mistake. Next time, maybe not so close? ;-)

Anyway, after a hurried morning and a trip to the Secretary of State for some fancy-pants apostille seals, our preliminary dossier is in the mail and on its way to our agency! You can pray that it passes their approval and gets forwarded to Russia shortly.

In other crazy-blessings-news from today: we are $1,000 closer to our goal and a mere $249 from meeting it. A few days ago I was crying over our soon-to-be outgoing mail, while whispering with little faith, "leave to thy God to order and provide." Today I opened our mail to see this generous donation and cried again while singing the next line, "In every change, he faithful will remain!"

Today was a little picture of those "thorny ways" leading to a "joyful end!"