Friday, January 14, 2011

First Pics!!

I'm so in awe of God. We have been counting down the days until we could see our sweet love on ultrasound, and today was the day! It was amazing. I cried and cried. Here are some pictures of God's awesome handiwork!!!







P.S. We're waiting until delivery day to find out our baby's gender. Any guesses?

Saturday, January 08, 2011

Let everything that has breath...

Praise the LORD.

Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens.
Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him for his surpassing greatness.
Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
praise him with the harp and lyre,
praise him with timbrel and dancing,
praise him with the strings and pipe,
praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.

Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.

Praise the LORD

Psalm 150

He is so worthy!!! I can hardly find words to express how powerfully we have seen God at work over this past year. It has been painful and beautiful all at the same time! After the loss of our first baby in May we both knew that the Lord was moving us from Colorado. So, with a combination of sadness and excitement we went off, halfway across the country to a new home in Wisconsin and many surprises! In addition to being very close to Steve's family and much nearer to mine, we have found here an amazing church family and have been challenged and stretched in our walks with Christ like never before. We also were so blessed to meet a couple who are actively involved with Hands at Work in Africa, the organization I spent a year with in Mozambique. Through this divinely orchestrated friendship and other things as well, God has stirred our hearts in a fresh way to be involved with the plight of the orphan and widow. We are praying about how this will be lived out in the years to come and trusting God to lead. We became licensed foster parents this year and are respite providers. This simply means that we help out other foster families when they need to be gone and can't take their foster children, or when there is a placement for whom a family cannot be immediately found. We desire to do more, but at this point our grueling work schedules do not allow it. But, very soon we hope this will change!!!

Steve and his brother are very busy working together on an awesome business opportunity that is most definitely the provision of God for our family. More on that in the future! We celebrated our first anniversary in September and are now eagerly awaiting the birth of our baby who is, at this very moment, making me smile with his/her busy activity in my womb:). May cannot come soon enough!

We feel exceedingly blessed, but it has not come about easily, and for this I am actually thankful. All of the change, the stress and the pain of loss and uncertainty this year has challenged our comfort zones and complacency in our walks with Christ and in our marriage. We have desperately needed God and found Him waiting for us to turn to Him. We have seen our sinful tendency to be more consumed with desire for the 'American Dream' than to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him. We have realized that more of our thoughts rest on football teams, shopping trips and our plans for the weekend than on loving God and our neighbor, and this is to our shame. We have so far to go, but are thankful that God is not leaving us alone but doing the work of refining. Have your way, Lord Jesus.

Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.

Praise the LORD