Grace...

A few months ago, a precious friend presented me with a present.  It wasn't my birthday or any special holiday, so I was a bit confused as to the occasion.  I pulled back the tissue paper to uncover this: a bottle of the most amazingly calming smelling shower cream-I seriously wish I could open up the bottle right now as you are reading this so you could breathe it all in.  It.is.amazing!  She told me that when she was pregnant, someone had given her a bottle of it, and it had such a relaxing and calming effect that she gives it to all of her friends now who are pregnant.  Even though I may not have a baby growing in my belly, she recognized how we do have a baby growing in our hearts right now, and this is truly a time just as if we were pregnant with our child, since we are eagerly anticipating their arrival and preparing for him/her/them.  I was so touched that she would think of me in this way.  I can't even express how validating it was to have someone recognize our situation in that way, too.  I'm not saying no one else has done that.  I just mean that it was such a touching moment for me to be recognized to her as one of her pregnant friends.  (Fellow friends who are TTC or have experienced TTC-I think you understand all too well the desire of experiencing pregnancy and waiting for that moment when you can announce to anyone within hearing distance that you are expecting!) So every time that I start feeling anxious about the adoption process, or sad, or discouraged, etc., I hop in to the shower and am reminded to take a deep breath, relax, and trust that God has gone before us and has everything figured out.  (Thankfully, it's a big bottle, because lately I've needed that reminder more and more!:-)  

And then this past week, I was blessed once again by another very dear friend to me.  She came up to me at church on mother's day and presented me with a gift.  I opened it up to find this sweet necklace resembling a bird's nest with three pearls inside of it.  Maybe you've seen them before-each pearl represents each one of your children.  She told me that one of the pearls was for Lucy, but she asked the lady to add two more pearls to my necklace, knowing that we really have been praying for twins, and even if we don't have twins, the two pearls represent the child we are going to adopt, and any other future children the Lord may bless our family with.  I was brought to tears!  Once again, it felt so validating to have someone recognize the reality of our expanding family.  Again--please don't take this as me saying people have not been affirming of this because you all have been so encouraging and supportive!  It's just always amazing to me how God brings encouragement and affirmation your way at the time you need it most, and that was one of those days for me.  Each day when I put on my necklace, I'm filled with such hope and excitement for how God IS going to answer our prayer for more children.  

I'm reminded of a verse He gave to me early on in our adoption process: Genesis 28:15 "I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land.  I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."  I have no doubt in my mind God is going to fulfill the desires of my heart...but I will admit that i have days, as I've expressed recently, where it's difficult to keep that in the forefront of my mind.  And that's where God steps in with HIS graciousness to remind us of Who He is and what he has promised.  As I was getting ready to write this post, I decided to look up the definition for the word "Grace," the name of the shower cream my friend gifted me.  This is what I found:
GRACE:

Pronunciation: grās

n.1. The exercise of love, kindness, mercy, favor; disposition to benefit or serve another. 

I feel like my friends names should be inserted into that definition, because they truly exercised love, kindness and a disposition of servanthood to me.  I'm reminded how much God desires to use us to encourage one another and to love one another and to meet each other wherever we are at.  I'm so thankful to have friends in my life who have done just that, and I pray I can be an extension of God's grace to others, just as they have been to me.

Because of HIS grace,
P-B:)