God's at work

"A child, when born, brings the message that God has not yet lost hope in human beings." 

I found this quote on a CEJA website and thought it was beautiful.  Each child born into this world, whether to parents who can or cannot take care of him forever, has special meaning to God.  Our children's lives will not begin the moment we meet them.  They once belonged to someone else and they have a life story that (until now) has gone on without us as a part of it.  We are not redeeming or rescuing or creating children by adopting them.  We are merely holding on to something God created to love and be loved.  

I think that once our adoption is completed (and maybe for a long time after) we will be finding out the many unseen ways that God worked to bring our family together.  Yesterday, as our papers were being submitted to CEJA for the first time, another AWAA family was flying home to the US with their 3 children (girl, boy, girl).  They are the second family from our agency to complete a Brazilian adoption and, though we don't know them personally, have walked along the same path as us.  

We are praying a lot these days, feeling the progress and the first day of our life as a family drawing nearer than it has ever been.  I pray for the papers and the workers who hold them in their hands.  I pray those workers would be diligent and motivated by the faces of the children they place.  I pray that we will find favor in their eyes and that they will see the Lord between every line of our dossier.  I pray that it will be soon, very soon, that God unites us with our children--for their sake and for the sake of our aching, longing hearts.  I pray that, somehow, God will breeze us through the final hurdles while keeping our hearts still before Him, trusting Him only and opening our hearts to learn from His word while he prepares us to be the right parents for the children he's chosen for us.