A Time For Healing, Growing and FAITH

In July I posted I would have a follow up post coming to a previous post.  It is finally here.  I can not say since that post everything has been perfect, but I can say I have looked at things differently and things have changed for the better.  Not best, but better.  So what did my friend enlighten me with, what have I been contemplating over the last few months?  Lots, and here is the low-down...

No surprise I have struggled with our adoption.  It is mentioned in the blog post titled, "The Truth?  You Can't Handle The Truth!"

There is a little background information needed here.  The previous post came at a time when I felt God was so silent in my pleading.  I felt a loss of who I was, who our family was and felt God distant from me.  My friend that emailed me had said she believed God gives us the desires of our heart if we pray about them.  I had fasted a whole year from my 3 favorite things for this reason.  Every time I desired one of these things I prayed for Kaitlin and for our family and my relationship with her and for her healing.  That whole year I felt or heard nothing from God.  I was at my lowest point ever in my relationship with our Mighty Creator.

Enter the letter from my friend Lori.  Enter a short quote from the speaker at family camp.  Enter a longer paraphrased quote from another speaker at family camp and the book "Greater" by Steven Furtick.

In my letter, my friend Lori pointed out all the "I's" in my praying.  All MY wants.  She pointed out how I had made our adoption all about me.  When in truth it isn't about me at all!  The little girl with us isn't for "me"!!!  She is for Christ.  She is all for Him.  She is my "talent" that God has given me and he wants me to grow her into many more "talents."  I didn't hear God speak in that time of fasting because I was looking for MY answers, not God's.  Praise the Lord he can use others to tap me on the shoulder or knock me over where I am standing so I can actually HEAR his answer.

I needed to look at the "I" in the situation.  Not Kaitlin, but me.  I needed to realize that I am God's slave (taken from Lori's letter to me), I am here to do what He asks of me with no, why's?.  I need to take control of my emotions by taking control of my thoughts.  If a negative thought arises I need to replace it with a God centered thought about Kaitlin,  (also from Lori's letter).

In the process of "processing" this letter from Lori I went to camp.  I think God was re-enforcing what he was telling me through Lori's letter.  One day while the speaker was doing his thing, he kind of veered off of his topic and brought up his son.  He had a son that he struggled with.  One night he was sitting on this son's bed at bedtime and the Lord said to him, "You are to love this boy!  No other person on this planet will love him like you will!  No other person will accept him like you will."  The speaker then went back to his topic.  Think God was tapping me on the shoulder?  That wasn't the end of it!  The next day a guest speaker was there.  He talked about Joseph, as in Joseph and the coat of many colors Joseph.  For those of you who forget the story;  He was the second youngest son of a large family.  He was a favorite of his dads.  He could interpret dreams which was from God, but he was a little cocky and told his family they would bow down to him some day.  Kind of rubbed it in his brothers faces.  They were already jealous of him, this just topped it of to make them hate him.  They then sold him into slavery.  In Genesis chapter 40 he is in prison and interprets a few dreams.  He thinks he can get himself out of prison if one of the people he interprets a dream for gives a good word for him.  That person forgets and he is stuck there until God is allowed to do the work and Joseph gives up his, "it is all about me attitude."  In chapter 41 Joseph comes out prison on the great side of leadership and is restored to a high position.  Chapter 41 is coming out of the testing and growth and learning.  Before chapter 41 Joseph was a man chosen by God, but by Chapter 41 he was a MAN OF God.  He learned from the trials and tribulation so he could then lead because he was a man of God and not trying to do things on his own and talking the talk without walking the walk.

This spoke to me in so many ways!  I look so good on the outside with my fasting, prayer, adoption, words, examples, but it is all surface.  God knows I need to be stripped to the core and laid bare for all to see.  I need to allow Him to build in me a foundation of Christ centered love, slavery and faith.  I am in Chapter 40 because God sees in me a need to refine me so I may become the woman of God he created me to be, not just the woman chosen by God to raise Kaitlin.

Oh how powerful he is, all knowing, amazing!  Christ lives in me and He wants me to be able to live that whole heartedly, not just on the surface.  Am I perfect yet?  By NO MEANS!  Only when our Saviour comes again will I be perfect in HIS perfectness.  Only He can be completely whole right now.  BUT he can do good works in me and teach me what it means to accept Him as Lord and Savior.  How I am to serve Him even when it is hard on me and do it with His love.  Am I in a great place with Kaitlin?  Not yet, but I have FAITH he will continue to work in me so I may teach her all about Him and the peace he can give.  To teach her all about HIS sacrifice for us that allows us to sacrifice ourselves for Him.  I am a work in progress and Christ is at the center of it.  That is what I am most excited about.  Praise be to God our Father that he loves me that much!  To care about changing me to understand I am HIS and Kaitlin is His! That I can do for Him even when I am not perfect, as long as I am willing.  In Christ, Annie