BLESSINGS

"Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised." +Psalms 48:1

Today has been a good day. The Lord has blessed me with sweet friendships. Madilyn has been struggling with diving off the block in swim team and has been feeling super defeated and down about her fear and its effect on her swim performance. She's shed many a tear over this one. Yesterday, out of the blue, a dear friend offered to help coach Madilyn this morning in a private lesson. Upon returning from the coaching session, Madilyn burst into the house, raised both hands to the sky, and yelled, "I CAN DIVE OFF THE BLOCK NOW!!!" :) She was so excited and relieved and proud. The Lord knows our every hurt and need and He meets those needs by placing people in our lives to minister to us and help us. I was so blessed and humbled by His provision for Madilyn this morning and for helping her overcome her fear. YEA GOD!!!



We are still praying about our international agency decision and will ask you to join us in praying that God guides us to the agency he wants us to use for our adoption and that He will make the path very clear to us. This decision is a hard one for us for some reason. We are still moving forward with our homestudy but haven't signed contracts with an international agency yet.



Another huge praise today.....

As of tonight, we have completed the paperwork portion of our homestudy (YEA!) and I am going to drive the documents to the homestudy agency tomorrow. (YEA!) We have a class to attend this weekend on International adoption and we'll do our final homestudy visit on December 8. We're 1/3 of the way there with the paperwork processing!!



By the way--- our sermon on Sunday was on Matthew 9:12 "On hearing these things, Jesus said, 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners."



I was so touched and moved that God feeds me small bites and helps me learn and grow in His goodness with baby steps!! For months, I've been really praying that God will give me the strength to make my life a living sacrifice.... and then, in this passage He says "I DESIRE MERCY, NOT SACRIFICE." Hmmmmm.......now where does this lead me......If Mercy is a word used to describe compassion shown by one person to another, or a request from one person to another, then serving others with compassion and being selfless for another's benefit will be joyful and not a duty. I do desire to have mercy towards others as Jesus is saying to do, and in this compassion- the giving and loving and doing for others will come from my heart, it will be joyful and most importantly it will glorify God. I do want to be MERCIFUL and through that act of compassion, I want to share God's goodness and love with the oppressed. I am now praying that God will give me a stronger conviction to have mercy and compassion for others and to stop worrying about the "sacrifice" that I am making in this little life of mine. True JOY is about putting Jesus first, Others second, and Yourself last.