A red necklace in a time of desperation- Memorial Box Monday!

    I am beginning to really look forward to what God will do next on Sunday nights! I just love writing for Memorial Box Mondays! I love it because when I try to come up with something on my own, my mind always goes blank. So far, as I ask God about it, He has always come through...and usually not with something that was in the forefront of my mind. He has been whispering to me about this story all week long, and I ahve been brushing it aside because I didn't see the signifigance...until I sat down to write. Now, as I write this entry, I am overwhelmed by just how much I needed to be reminded of this....

    If you have not heard of Memorial Box Mondays, you can read all about it here   http://aplacecalledsimplicity.blogspot.com/2010/02/memorial-box-monday-giveaway.html and to read more awesome stories of God's faithfulness you can click on the Memorial Box Monday Box to the right of this post. It looks like this:

But this one doesn't link so click the one on the right!

      I wrote this post (below) when we were waiting to hear if we were going to travel within days to go and get Georgia in China. We had received another update that she was very sick. If we did not hear on Monday that our Travel Approval had come...we would wait at least another 30 days to go and get her. 30 days is a big deal in the life of a little girl with a heart conditon who is very sick. This happened the Sunday before we were to find out about when we would travel....

     "So jump forward to this Sunday... I am such a weak and fickle person who once again was at the end of all that I could endure. The whole morning getting ready for church I had to keep excusing myself from the kids to close the door and go and cry. My heart aches and longs to hear tomorrow that we will be able to travel. I honestly was dreading church, not because of anything to do with our church but because I did not feel like I could make it through the service without being an emotional wreck (which actually would have been ok to the other church members). I just didn't know if I could pick myself up afterwards.




I didn't notice this at the time but the kids were actually helpful in getting dressed and ready for church. I got to dress Ravenna as a girl standing up and helping instead of as a "kitty" crawling around meowing, Parker's shoes slipped on with no wiggles, and the kids got themselves in the car even before I was ready...that never happens! Anyhow, we had a few extra minutes so I decided to go and get the mail since it had been a few days.


When I got to the Post Office I noticed two packages from New Day Foster Home in China (this is an amazing foster home that I have been in contact with but it is not where Georgia is). Inside the packages I found this: each had a necklace made in Jingdezhen (the city where Ravenna was born), each necklace was made out of red beads with black tips that looked strikingly like ladybugs. Honestly when I first held up the little red bag I thought that I was holding a bag full of ladybugs. For those of you in the adoptive community, you get how powerful that is. For those of you who are not, I am not sure where it exactly started but the ladybug has become a symbol of Chinese adoption and when you see ladybugs it is supposed to mean that you will meet your child soon.


Now before anyone starts to think that I have lost it, I know that this is just a myth and that it does not hold weight in Scripture or anything like that. But I do know that it was just what I needed, a tangible way to hold on another day. It reminds me of this Scripture:


" For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in Heaven and on earth derives it's name. I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and high and long and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all fullness of God."

Ephesians 3:14-19

I do not know what all this means but I do know that tomorrow as that phone rings, no matter what the outcome is, whether we travel in a few days or it take longer I trust that the Lord will walk us through it. "

     ...It turned out that, after a few more twists and turns, we DID travel with that group to go and get our daughter. When we got home and she was directly admitted to the hospital, we were told by the surgeons that she would not have been alive in another 30 days...

Gotcha Day!!!

Georgia & I the day we landed in Seattle and she was admitted to Children's

Miss Georgia Mei now...

 
  So...fast forward to now. The Lord has been whispering about these red necklaces all week. I have struggled because it seems like such a silly thing to write about. It meant so much but how does it relate to now? Well...we have some things going on in our lives that are probably not going to be a quick fix, things that I desperately want to see healing in, things that break my heart and bring me to my knees before God feeling so small and weak and at a loss as to how to walk them...and what does God do? He reminds me of those necklaces. He reminds me that His ways are not mine, that His vision and His eyes are different, that He knows what is best. My job is to keep my eyes fixed on Him, to step out when He leads and to be obedient...He, the God of all compassion takes care of the rest.

    I find myself tonight asking, "Do I remember how wide, how high and how deep His love really is? Can I put my weight down on it?" and now those little red necklaces do not seem like such a small thing. If He could make a way in His perfect timing for our little, HEALTHY girl who sleeps in the next room...He can make a way in these other areas too...

   Those beautiful red necklaces will now have a home in our Memorial Box until we one day pass them on to our girls!

   To read more of God's AMAZING miracles in our life and the life of our Georgia Mei read here http://pandalily.com/miller/?paged=4