We’ve completed the homestudy, conducted all the background checks, spilled our guts about every private area of our lives (including our pee samples and bloodwork) and received approval from U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services! And, as of Monday, April 17, our dossier to bring home Superhero 4 is officially logged in China!
Adoption acronym speech: WE ARE L.I.D.!
Now we wait six to 12 weeks for our Letter of Approval/Letter Seeking Confirmation from China officially approving us as Superhero 4’s parents! (Let’s be honest — I’m praying hardcore for six! Come on, May 29, 2017!)
In the meantime, we nest.
We paint old furniture to look new.
We sort the 3t clothes that have survived three not-so-easy-on-the-pants boys from the ones that took a knee-hole casualty.
And we pray.
But what we won’t be doing this time around in that grueling two-to-three-month wait is fundraising.
Because friends, in an amazing move that has humbled and floored Super-Spouse and me in ways we can’t even describe, God has provided every single dime (minus travel) we need to fund this adoption.
Without fundraising.
In the period of three short months.
Super-Spouse and I hesitated to even share this story, because we know what it’s like to spend hours pricing 25 cent garage sale items. We know what it’s like to run marathons and pray that your friends will want to see you complete them as Superman and Superwoman so badly that they give generously to embarrass you at the finish line. We KNOW what it’s like to count every penny and pray that you can make that next payment — to the agency. To U.S.C.I.S. To China. To the orphanage.
God was so faithful to provide everything we needed for our first adoption, and by the time we received the adoption tax credit a few months after we returned home with Superman, He then, too, covered the cost of every single expense.
But He did it through fundraisers.
He did it through donations.
He did it through hours and hours of t-shirt order processing and spring garage sale item gathering and wedding dress E-bay posting and scholarship applying.
This time, He simply asked us to trust Him as our ultimate provider in a new way that scared us beyond belief. Probably because He knew that sitting still and knowing that He is God is NOT something Super-Spouse and I do well.
We like to work and be BUSY while knowing that He is God. Sitting is not really in our vocabulary.
But wouldn’t you know that when we put it in HIS hands, not our own, our God did it.
We just couldn’t keep this awesome testimony of HIS providence and HIS GRACE to ourselves.
I posted THIS story, which still brings me to grateful-thankful-still-in-shock tears, on the Of Capes and Combat Boots Facebook page yesterday. (Do you follow the Of Capes and Combat Boots page? Real advocacy opportunities happen HERE!)
So, so grateful to our awesome, providing God. <3
Facebook Post, April 18, 2017
Adoption Tip Tuesday: Trust your finances in God's all-providing hands.
When we began the process to adopt Superhero 4 in January, Super-Spouse and I prayed about how we would fund this adoption.
We're those psychotic, cash-only, we-have-adult-allowances, no-debt people (thank you, Dave Ramsey and Total Money Makeover of 2010). And so the thought of coming up with $30 to $40K that we didn't have in our tacky cash envelopes was a little bit overwhelming.
We fundraised for Superman's adoption in 2013 (read all about how God MOVED MOUNTAINS to provide every cent of Superman's adoption HERE). And so we'd SEEN God provide over and over again.
But this time, as we prayed, we felt as if He were asking us to trust Him COMPLETELY.
WITHOUT fundraising this time.
And so, shakily and with big-time "Jesus-please-don't-make-us-go-back-to-the-macaroni-days-of-2010" prayers, we did.
And sweet friends, I cannot even TELL you all the ways in the last three months God has provided.
He sold our house in Washington. THE WEEK before Christmas. And closed it two months later ... with much drama ... and with MORE than we expected to ever make.
He used an adoption tax credit we didn't even realize we still had to TRIPLE our normal tax return ... and cover a huge portion of the expenses we had left on our adoption account.
After our Washington house closed, He finagled a mysterious $2,000+ check into our mailbox for an overlooked mistake in our escrow account ... that then paid one entire adoption fee that same month.
In three months, when added to our minivan-turned-adoption savings fund, He LITERALLY provided EVERY PENNY of our adoption expenses (minus travel) ... in the craziest and most unexpected ways.
And then, in His abundance and His grace, He took care of absolutely every other detail of our lives.
Because of his mobility issues, Superhero 4 will need a good/medical stroller.
We didn't have one. After saving for adoption, we also didn't have savings left to purchase one.
So we purged our house, cut our toys in half, priced out everything we hadn't used in the last 12 months and sold all items at a garage sale last weekend ... and earned the exact amount we need WITH TAX to purchase Superhero 4 the stroller he will be able to use for years.
Our child car seat has long since expired, and the only one unused remaining doesn't fit a child of Superhero 4's weight.
After years of not being able to sell it, Super-Spouse put his bike on Craigs List ... and sold it for the cost of Superhero 4's new car seat ... 12 hours later.
Last week, Superhero 1 signed up for middle school band.
We didn't have an instrument, and we were trying to finagle finances to rent one.
That night, Mom C texted us a picture of an instrument she'd purchased for our nephew years ago.
A trumpet -- the exact instrument Superhero 1 had selected hours before.
From Grandma. For free.
Because we haven't celebrated Super-Spouse's birthday on the same continent for a majority of the years we've been married, we wanted to honor him this year with a special date.
He, of course, being a future knight in training, chose Medieval Times.
He scored the tickets at nearly half price, and the man at the counter even upgraded our whole family to the "Royal Package" for free.
At every turn, at every point, from our adoption funding to even our trumpet playing, God has said, "I gotcha. I've got this. There's no better place for your family than in My totally trustworthy hands."
And as we've shakily stumbled forward, certain of His calling but uncertain of the means to accomplish it, we've been shocked and amazed and totally and completely humbled by the undeserved blessings He has poured out again and again and again.
He has provided.
He has provided.
And He has provided.
Far more than we could have asked or imagined.
All we had to do was put what was already HIS back in HIS HANDS.
"Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it." ~ Malachi 3:10
#godsfloodgates #morethanwecouldaskorimagine #adoptiontiptuesday