It’s very wild how you just happened upon those verses opening your Bible. I think God has a funny sense of humor sometimes and gives us exactly what we need … when we need it.

I’d love to hear more of your story.

Mike

As we were getting ready to travel to adopt our sons, their country’s Parliament outlawed international adoption. We got a panicked message from our agency telling us to get to Tbilisi immediately; if the President signed the law before we got there we wouldn’t be able to get them out. They prepared us that even if we got to the country quickly, we still might not get them out. The next day we were on a plane; during the flight I was overcome with fear that we wouldn’t get them out I asked the Lord to comfort me. I took the bible out of my carry-on and opened it (randomly…HA!) and the passage that it opened to (and the verses that literally leaped off the page) were beginning in Isaiah 43:5 “Do not be afraid for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west. I will way to the north “Give them up!” and to the south “Do not hold them back!” Bring my sons from afar, and my daughters from the ends of the earth–everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” Further down in verses 12-13 I read “I am God, No one can deliver out of my hand. When I act, who can reverse it?”

During the difficult times (development and emotional issues arose), I sometimes questioned whether God “made a mistake,” not by giving them to us, but them ME as their mother. I felt inadequate, but during those times, I remembered those verses and that God had literally brought us from the west and gathered them from the east…saving them from a country whose government was overthrown in a coup less than a month later. To my knowledge the country remains closed to international adoption.

Another miraculous footnote…three years later they were manifesting some behavior that caused me to fear again “Will they be OK?” “Will we ever be able to overcome the neglect of the 2 years they spent in the orphanage?” (40% of the kids in that orphanage died by age 3). My mind often fixated on what might have happened before they became our children. I would refer to the Isaiah 43 passage for comfort…but reading later in the chapter God spoke again, starting v. 18: “Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up, do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”

Perhaps most miraculous is the following: My husband is in the military and during one of the times I was “fixating” on what happened to them before we got them, we attended a military ball with literally hundreds of people. It was open seating and a Marine and his wife asked if they could join us at our table. We chatted about where we had each been “stationed” and the Marine mentioned “Tbilisi”…a very unusual location for the U.S. military to send people. I mentioned that we adopted our boys from there (there is only one orphanage in the city). He responded that he and his men went OFTEN to the orphanage because “they didn’t have enough hands to hold the babies. So we would go on days we had often, and hold those babies.” The chills started up mine spine and I asked when he was there. Sure enough, he arrived just 2 months after our sons were born and was there for 6 months, visiting the orphanage throughout that time. It is very likely our sons were some of the babies he held “because there wasn’t enough hands.”

Isn’t our God amazing? He brought a U.S. serviceman (just like his father) to hold our boys when we could not; and during a time of great fear on my part, God orchestrated a diving meeting with a Marine who choose OUR table, leading to a conversation to reassure us that He had our boys in His hands all the while. (“No one can deliver out of my hand!”)

Sorry for such a long note, I pray you don’t have any difficulty following your adoption, but if you do, I hope our story will bring you comfort and hope.

Thanks for letting me share (I suppose you had no choice!)
Leah