Find You On My Knees

God answers prayers.

His timing is perfect. 

There is simply no other explanation.

Every delay this adoption has met so far was proved this week to be absolutely necessary. Down to the day.

• Samantha's profile appearing, disappearing, and reappearing on the Reece's Rainbow website months ago, delaying my initial commitment to her by several weeks
• Key players at the adoption agency being out of the office due to surgery and the birth of a baby
• A background check from California that seemed like it would never come, delaying the completion of my home study for weeks.
• 12 hours of Hague accredited course work that turned out to be the wrong 12 hours and had to be completed again.
• A homestudy that was lost in internet-world for 3 weeks, waiting to be edited, delaying my ability to begin dossier paperwork
• Documents that I thought were finished were declined by our state capital, needing to be completed again.
• Three trips to the doctor's office before finally getting a proper medical clearance
• And several I've-never-seen-that-befores all along the way

With each delay, I must confess I wondered what God was doing. I wept, not just out of frustration, but out of desperation. "Why, God, would you allow this to happen?! My daughter is wasting away in an orphanage! You know she needs to come home to her mother so she can start healing. And I know that You can do this. So how long must I leave her there?"

Even though I know that God loves my daughter more than I do, I would quickly resort to begging. "Please God. Please have mercy on her!" (as if He wasn't!)

And then it happened. 

After waiting nearly five months for Samantha's file to arrive (the biggest delay of all!), I was faced with the dark reality that all of the paperwork I'd been working on for months was already getting old. If her file did not surface, the agency was going to be forced to send me profiles of other waiting children.

I have never been so devastated in all of my life. For two days I felt nearly hopeless. "God is this what you want?" I would ask. "If this is truly your will, I will follow You. But I just don't believe that You want to leave her there!" 

I resigned myself to crying and waiting. And more crying.

And then Susanna sent out a plea asking for fervent prayers.

And I started receiving encouraging notes from friends. One, from my friend Sara, read:

I am praying and sending our plea to others. Keep trusting, Grace. Shut out all doubt. This means war.

At this point something inside of me finally snapped, waking me up to the true reality of God. I do not worship a God who is unable to fight for me and my daughter. My God can do anything! I must pray to Him with all trust and hope. And I must NOT let myself give in to sorrow (in other words, I can't let myself go back to that dark place where I was lingering before). I decided at that moment to trust God with Samantha' life. And this is not to say that her life depended on my decision to trust, but that my life did.

And so I began to pray as if my life depended on it.

For four days I prayed in anticipation of a meeting that was to happen in Sam's country, not knowing if the outcome of this meeting would affect our adoption process, but hoping it would.

And SO many of you prayed with me. SOOOO many.

And those prayers literally changed my life and my view of God. I have never ever experienced Him the way I did in those days of intense prayer. I have never approached Him with such trust and expectancy. I have never believed so fully in His love and POWER.

When God answered our prayers, and delivered Sam's file, right at the time of that meeting, I finally was able to wrap my pea-brain around God's perfect timing. Every single delay I have experienced was leading up to this moment. If everything had gone as I'd wanted, my dossier would have been ready weeks, maybe even months before Samantha's file was found. And I would have been faced with an impossible decision. But He knew. And He acted.

So today, as I visited my doctor once again to update an expired medical clearance, as I waited at the police station for a new background check, and as I walked out of the state capitol with with a stack of 9 documents, still not apostilled because of a computer glitch...I couldn't help but think, "It must not have been the right time, huh God? I'll try again tomorrow. You know best."

And He does.