Dear Jesus, thank you for our blessings and all our food, please help Owen to come home soon, Amen

Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Ro 12:12

Before this quote from Romans, Paul tells us love must be sincere and devoted to one another.  As we have struggled over the last four years with this adoption, no one has modeled Paul's instructions better than our two children.  One small example comes every night, for the last four years, as we sit around the dinner table and hold hands for the blessing, one of them will offer up "Dear Jesus, thank you for our blessings and all our food, please help Owen to come home soon, Amen."

They have shared our joy and tears, and are celebrating alongside us even as we are required to be apart from them for so long.

When we go through trials our human nature screams "why". But in watching our children I am reminded that in all of these things we must greatly rejoice, though for a little while we have suffered grief, these trials refine our faith to be strong and bring praise, glory, and honor to our Lord, Jesus Christ.


Here am I, and the children the Lord has given me. We are signs and symbols in Israel from the Lord Almighty, who dwells on Mount Zion.  Isaiah 8:18