Justice, Mercy, and Redemption

This is something that's been on my heart for a long time and I'm going to see if I can do it justice here.

I believe that God loves justice. He designed people to be in perfect harmony with Him. In this state there would no injustice because God is just and if we could be 100% with him then we'd be just as well. It doesn't take people long to mess this up.

Adam and Eve choose to step away from God and from his character and they sin. At that point God's justness (real word?) calls for payment for their sin. This is where we see the mercy of God. He wants to be with us despite our tendency to act like losers and so he found a way to redeem us through his Son.

I really think this is what grace is about: tempering justice with mercy to bring about redemption. (This is also our own personal ideal as parents)

You can read the Bible and you'll see these themes repeated again and again and again.

I think that this same theme plays out in adoption and that is one of the reasons that God so often talks about orphans and taking us into His family. Let me be very clear here: we do not think we are "saving" Little Miss. We are honored that she will be part of our family. We are simply building our family in the way that seems best for us and right for our family. The work is being done by God.

This is how I think God feels about adoption. I believe that His perfect plan for Little Miss was that she would grow up in the loving arms of her first family. But we live in a fallen world and some of the consequences of that are sickness, poverty, death, etc. Justice would be that God would leave all of us to our misery for rejecting him. Mercy says that he loves us and that he has "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future". He does not want any of us to suffer and so he has chosen to allow us to be adopted into His family where we will have ultimate joy. He is allowing our family to be a part of his plan for Little Miss' life to redeem her from sorrow and bring her back into a loving family. Redemption.

We can all be redeemed. For some of us it will just be a little more obvious than for others. It's something we all need. It's something that can only come through God. It's something I am exceptionally grateful for this Thanksgiving.

Take me off the rollercoaster

I don't know if it's the process of the adoption, my own personality, or a combination thereof, but it's such a rollercoaster. I'm happy. It's going well. Yeah. I think we're at the top of the hill and are about to go zooming down and instead we're going through all these stupid loops and I'm upside down and sad about it.

I talked to CAI today to check on our status and how close we are to starting our interviews. It turns out that she has all our reference material in, and when she read off the paperwork...we have it all! Except one. We got Andrew's doctor's clearance today. No problem. No blood pressure issues. We got the paperwork for both the boys today. No problem. (Except for two hours at the doctor's office with two children).

What was the problem? Me. :( I had the nerve to have had postpartum depression and to have moved twice since then. The doctor I saw today wouldn't sign a letter saying that my post partum depression was caused by pregnancy, has been treated, and will not affect my parenting an adopted child. So, he wouldn't sign it. He signed one, but not this one. So that makes me ONE document away from being able to schedule my interviews.

One document really isn't so bad except that it might be hard to get this signed. I can't just walk into the doctor's office (in California) and explain it to them and stand there to be sure they do it right. I have to call and explain it to them and then fax it to them and we can't fax from the house and then they need to fax it back so I can see if it's right. Then they have to mail it. Then I have to get it notarized. Do we see how this one paper is turning into an event? AND, I have to hope that they'll sign off on it for both pregnancies even though I was only there for one. If I have to deal with a military clinic and get a separate letter from them it's going to be a disaster. Truly. No exaggeration. It hurts my stomach to even think about how difficult that would be.

So today I went from elated to frustrated (I left out another visit to the post office, an expired credit card, a dead cell phone, and an hour long wait at the doctor's office) to mad and now to sad.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?!

A Good Day

Today was a good day. I spent the morning drinking my own version of Starbucks (3/4 mug of coffee, 1/4 mug of milk, 3 packets of splenda, a bunch of chocolate syrup, and topped with whipped cream) while cruising the internet and my boys played.

I spent the midmorning cleaning up the wreck that was my house and working on the photo book for Little Miss.

I spent the afternoon and early evening with my best friend from high school and her sweet little new baby. I shared clothes with her, and she listened to my incessent adoption talk. Oh, and we ate pizza and drank Coke.

Then my husband came home with the mail and LO AND BEHOLD our driving records from Georgia!!! Thank you all for praying. Not only that, but I won a beautiful bracelet (the picture is good, but it doesn't do the bracelet justice) and it arrived today. I LOVE it. It was a giveaway from Megan's blog.

A good day, a good day indeed.