Just you WAIT and SEE...

This is Jessica, the oldest daughter in the Boggs family. I am about to turn 15 (in 26 days! not that I’m counting). 

As I sit here and stare at the first picture we received of F. and O., I focus on their eyes. I just don’t like looking at it. I see sadness, loneliness, and fear.

They have no idea that there is a family waiting to take them in and love them more than they will understand. They don’t know that there is a brighter day if they just wait a few months. They don’t understand why they are in the orphanage. They are scared. 

I would do anything just to hold them and whisper to them, “It’s going to be okay! Just wait! Soon, your life will be completely changed. We are preparing for you to come home. JUST WAIT! Don’t waste your time worrying. It’s not worth worrying because what is waiting for you is beyond your imagination. We love you unconditionally! We want YOU.”

They have no idea. 

When I think about how much they must be worried and scared, I think of us as children of God. We are dirty. We are abandoned. We are unworthy of God’s grace and love. We are scared. We worry more then necessary. We don’t understand. But, if we stop and listen to our heavenly Father, HE is whispering to us:

“Its going to be okay. 

Just wait. 

Soon your life will be completely changed.

Don’t waste your time worrying. 

It’s not worth worrying about it because what is waiting for you is beyond your imagination. 

Just you WAIT and SEE. 

I am preparing for you to come home. 

I love you unconditionally. 

I want YOU!"

In our heavenly adoption, God CHOSE us in our while we were still sinners, dirty and opposed to God. He loves us more then we understand just like my sweet F. and my precious O. They don’t understand why our family loves them. Just like we are anxiously waiting day by day to bring the boys home, the Lord is waiting to bring us home- our true home. What we don’t understand is that their is SO much more waiting for us yet we waste too much time worrying about earthly things when all that does not matter. That is like the boys worrying about their life in the orphanage when in reality, they will be here, home, for far longer then they will be in the orphanage. 

The Lord has taught me so much in this adoption process and this is one of the lessons He has taught me. Stop worrying about the NOW, its simply not worth it.

Jess(:

Happy Happy Day!

Adoption Update...We have boys!!!

Well, we don't HAVE boys with us yet, but we have found our children and are in the process of making them ours. We can't post their pictures yet, but they are precious brothers ages 6 and 4. We have hope. Hope that there is an end in sight. God has been so good to us. The last week has been such a rollercoaster ride and he has shown himself faithful once again. More to come...

Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. - Isaiah 1:17

Everybody's gotta eat right? 

Please join us...

Adoption Lunch Fundraiser

(sponsored by 1seedplanted.org)

Come before or after church anytime between 10:30-1:30pm

Date: Sunday May 6, 2012

Time: 10:30 am-1:30 pm

Location:  229 Franklin Rd. 

Brentwood, TN 37027 (Puffy Muffin Restaurant)  


Click Here for more details

All proceeds from this event will help bring our boys home!

Every Life is Precious!

This is Faith. A precious child being rescued by Adeye at nogreaterjoymom.com from an orphanage in Pleven, Bulgaria, where children are systematically and purposefully starved to keep her small, weak, and unable to do anything but lie in her own urine and feces. I am changed after reading this, I hope you will be too. Read her full story HERE.

Often I'm an all or nothing girl. I find the things I want to share here are one of 3 things. They are either intensly personal-things like exposing my fears, chanllenges and sin, sharing something I'm learning or that God is showing me, or extremely shallow and of no value to anyone. It's strange for me to blog in the first place because I often wonder(much like twitter and facebook) why anyone really cares what I have to say anyway. I suppose I will forge on because I'm guessing you might appreciate the connection, encouragement, and information just like I do when I read other blogs. So I will get over myself, the idea of making mistakes here on the blog, and the fear of what you think of me and strive for the connection anyway.

An update on the ADOPTION front...we are WAITING! It has taken alot longer on this leg of the journey-waiting for our referral (getting matched with our children) than we thought it would. But if we've learned (experientially) anything thus far it is that nothing goes as you expect in international adoption. Came across this great quote: Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life." - Simone Weil

Contrary to what I thought, waiting is not exactly passive. It's active and passive. It's the development of further trusting God's sovereignty, timing and provision. I Love Sue Monk Kidd's explanation:
"I had tended to view waiting as mere passivity. When I looked it up in my dictionary however, I found that the words passive and passion come from the same Latin root, pati, which means "to endure." Waiting is thus both passive and passionate. It's a vibrant, contemplative work. It means descending into self, into God, into the deeper labyrinths of prayer. It involves listening to disinherited voices within, facing the wounded holes in the soul, the denied and undiscovered, the places one lives falsely. It means struggling with the vision of who we really are in God and molding the courage to live that vision."  -  SUE MONK KIDD, When the Heart Waits

How do I love the folks over at 147 Million Orphans?

  Let me count the ways...

147 Million Orphans mission is 3-fold-first to raise awareness about the worldwide orphan crisis, to help those children with food, water and medicine, and lastly to aid families who are adopting with fundraising.  We are offering a special discount on selected 147 shirts to help raise money for our adoption. To check it out click here!

From https://www.147millionorphans.com/

STATISTICS … DON’T GET CAUGHT UP IN THE NUMBER, BUT IN THE CHILDREN !!!!

• Did you know there are hundreds of millions of  children worldwide who have lost one or both parents.
• Every 14 seconds an AIDS death leaves another child orphaned.
• Approximately 88 million orphans live in Asia.
• Approximately 45 million orphans live in Africa.
• Approximately 14 million orphans live in Latin America & the Caribbean.
• Approximately 1 million children live in public care in Central & Eastern Europe
• More than 800,000 children pass through America’s foster care system each year.

These statistics do not even include the UNKNOWN children living orphaned both here and abroad that go uncounted, unnoticed and unloved.

James 1:27 “Pure and lasting religion in the sight of God our Father means that we must care for the orphans and widows in their troubles  and refuse to let the world corrupt us.”

 

Love this song... "Blessings"

by Laura Song

 We pray for blessings

We pray for peace

Comfort for family, protection while we sleep

We pray for healing, for prosperity

We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering

All the while, You hear each spoken need

Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

'Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

What if a thousand sleepless nights

Are what it takes to know You’re near

What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We pray for wisdom

Your voice to hear

And we cry in anger when we cannot feel You near

We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love

As if every promise from Your Word is not enough

All the while, You hear each desperate plea

And long that we'd have faith to believe

'Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

What if a thousand sleepless nights

Are what it takes to know You’re near

And what if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

When friends betray us

When darkness seems to win

We know that pain reminds this heart

That this is not, this is not our home

It's not our home

'Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

And what if a thousand sleepless nights

Are what it takes to know You’re near

What if my greatest disappointments

Or the aching of this life

Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy

And what if trials of this life

The rain, the storms, the hardest nights

Are Your mercies in disguise