October 6th

Our plane is leaving today. Except that we’re not on it.

Two weeks ago I wrote that I am trusting in God’s character. And I asked you to keep me accountable to it if we didn’t get on that plane on October 6th. So I guess I better trust, eh? Because the world is watching.

I was worried, but I didn’t really think it wouldn’t happen. At least, not after we got the adoption certificate. That was always the wild card in this thing. Not the visa.

Yet….there goes our plane. And in front of us lies an uncertain process with uncertain timing. I have been working like crazy to collect all the pieces necessary for this application we have to submit. But once it is submitted, we wait. We don’t know for how long. Even the Dar embassy couldn’t tell us because the application gets sent up to the embassy in Nairobi.

I was thinking about how I need to print out new calendar pages. Because the calendar pages I have now say depressing things on them like, “Disneyland with family” and “Luncheon with FCC,” and “Pumpkin Patch with Living Stones.” So I decided to print out new pages for October and November. But not December. “You can have October and November, God,” I thought. “But you’d better not take December from me!”

Ha. Foolish Amy. But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? As if I were the ruler of my universe. Elisabeth Elliot often talked about how anything we love is “material for sacrifice.” That’s what December is for me. Material for sacrifice. Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him…Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.

Today is one of those “what-if-things-had-been-different” days. What if this hadn’t happened? What if we were waiting in the airport right now, ready to board in just a few minutes? What if our family was getting ready to pick us up? How different I would be feeling right now!

I’ve been thinking about another significant date. May 21st, 2005. Another huge disappointment in our lives. The date we lost our first and only biological child to early miscarriage. That baby would have been due the first week of January, 2006. I remember thinking about that baby during that week in January, thinking the same “what-if-things-had-been-different” thoughts.

It wasn’t until 10 months later, when Gil and I brought home our beautiful, precious, 10-month-old Grace, that I realized: She was born at the same time. The same time my biological baby would have been born, my precious Gracie was being born. Yet God chose to take the baby from my womb, and instead place in my arms another precious child—conceived at almost the exact same time. Yet I didn’t know on May 21st; I didn’t know in January. I didn’t know what God had in mind until November 1, 2006.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

Okay, God. I’m trying hard to hold out December with open hands.