It’s like sitting at the top of the roller-coaster hill: the excitement, the unknown, the holding your breath before the rush… just waiting for the back of the train to push you over and the wildly wonderful ride to really begin.

Tomorrow when our county worker comes we will be notifying her that we’re ready to take a placement. Then we’ll be waiting (maybe for only a few days, only God knows) to see who God invites into our home through a foster placement phone-call. It could be before Christmas, or maybe afterward. But regardless, our hearts are and have been opened to sharing our lives because of the Greatest Gift of All coming down to visit us… in the depths of our very beings. Who knows what baggage they will carry, what hurt or what loss. But Jesus has and will continue to compel us to love deeper and walk this road with the American orphan.

We love you, precious child (or children) from a depth we did not create, but Christ created in us.  And we have so prayed over your coming.

Please… feel welcome, even if only for a short stay on your journey… come in and rest. You are safe here. You are so loved.

– God, please help us lean on You throughout this journey of loving the American orphan. And if it would be Your will, please bring a child home to stay, should they need a family. Lord, please give us the strength to bless and release and exercise forgiveness, should we get the opportunity to come alongside a broken family as they learn how to parent, love and protect. And please, Lord, I pray for our girls… God that You would open all of our hearts to Jesus along this path. Thank You for Your Hope and the opportunity to come alongside the American orphan, learning what it is to daily love a child (or children)…. from right where they are. Please help us to feel Your direction when the phone-call or phone-calls come in. May we say yes when You desire it and not only when we feel it’s the safest or most comfortable move. Please, Lord, I pray… speak and help us to obey with joy. I love You. In Jesus’ Name.