A Little Discouraged

Every Sunday night, we talk to Israel on the phone. When we talked to him tonight, he sounded upbeat at first, but by the end of the conversation he was pretty quiet and sounded a little discouraged. Of course, our Spanish is not good enough to be able to really find out what's going on...and when something's bothering him, he doesn't want to say what it is anyway. By the time we hung up the phone tonight, Jeremy & I were both feeling pretty discouraged and battle-weary.

Kaylee asked me today, "Mom, how many years have we been waiting for Israel to come home?" I told her that it has only been about a year and a half, but the truth is, it feels like years sometimes! The last three weeks have felt especially long since, after making progress with the US Embassy, we haven't heard any updates on what's going on with our case. In the last few weeks, we've also seen other families who are adopting from other countries get very close to completing their adoptions, which they began after we were already months into our process. Even though we're ecstatic for them, and encouraged by the reminder that adoptions really do "come true", we can't help but wonder when it will be our turn.

So we find ourselves again at a point in our journey where we feel like we have just about run out of strength to keep going. Of course, we know that our own strength was never enough to begin with, but that we have been dependent all along on the grace and strength the Lord has given us. And we know that His supply never runs out!

Tonight, we are discouraged and sad, and we have many questions, but we are so thankful for the truth of Psalm 86: 15..."But you, O Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness." So we will take our discouragement, our sadness, and our questions to Him and we know that, in His amazing loving-kindness, He will stand us up, dust us off, and carry us a little further along this path.

We continue to rely on your prayers...