Nine Months!

(Yes, I flipped the number upside-down from the six month post)

Using an upside-down six for our 9 month post that's a day late won't be the only thing out of the ordinary for this month's update.

I naively believed we wouldn't be on the Wait List 9 months.   I knew it was a possibility, but I never really thought it would happen.  I really thought we would have a referral by now and would be (not so) patiently waiting for a court date.  For a number of reasons, we are still waiting for a referral and really have no way to even estimate how much longer we'll be waiting.  At this point I still hope we'll be home with a baby this year, but each month that goes by without a referral decreases that possibility.  However, the Lord has been so gracious to enable us to REALLY believe that His timing is perfect and to trust Him in especially difficult times.

This last month has been intense.  As a church we began reading through David Platt's Radical.   Here's Amazon's product description:

WHAT IS JESUS WORTH TO YOU?

It's easy for American Christians to forget how Jesus said his followers would actually live, what their new lifestyle would actually look like. They would, he said, leave behind security, money, convenience, even family for him. They would abandon everything for the gospel. They would take up their crosses daily...

BUT WHO DO YOU KNOW WHO LIVES LIKE THAT? DO YOU?

In Radical, David Platt challenges you to consider with an open heart how we have manipulated the gospel to fit our cultural preferences. He shows what Jesus actually said about being his disciple--then invites you to believe and obey what you have heard. And he tells the dramatic story of what is happening as a "successful" suburban church decides to get serious about the gospel according to Jesus.

I actually started reading the book back in November when the rest of the blogosphere was talking about it.  I got a couple of chapters into it and just had to put it down.  I remember telling a friend it was just "too much."  I wasn't sure how to describe at that time how it made me feel, but I now understand it was guilt.  It made me feel bad about myself because, at the time, I felt like it was adding more tasks to my checklist - and it was "too much."  I couldn't DO any more than I was already doing.  I was nearly overloaded as it was, and here was a guy telling me I wasn't doing enough  It was too much.  So I put it down and thought I might pick it up again at some point when I felt like I could better handle it.

Over the next few months the Lord began showing me so much about myself.  The details are better left for another post, but I began to realize that Lord didn't really have my heart, He just had my good behavior.  As I began to press into Him, He began to reveal areas of sin in my heart that I had ignored and enabled me to repent of those. 

When I found out we'd be reading through Radical as a church, I was not excited.   The last thing I wanted was for our church to be guilted into changing.  Rob and I talked about it and agreed to pray that if David Platt's message was something we needed to hear, we would be convicted that it was right, and not just feel guilty about it.  Thankfully, as we both began reading, the Holy Spirit confirmed to our hearts that Platt's message was true, what he says is right. 

We're only 4 chapters into the book (we're reading 1 chapter a week so we can really wrestle with each chapter), and it has been an intense 4 weeks.  I could probably write a post a day about everything the Lord is showing us and allowing us to witness.  Yes, it has been intense, but it has been oh-so-sweet.  Which is why we have so much trust in His timing.

A couple of weeks ago I woke up at 2:00 in the morning.  I was wide awake and my mind was churning with everything that had been happening.  Because I was wide awake, I decided to pray through all of it.  As I was praying, it hit me.  If we had received a referral in the timeframe we thought we would have, we would have been so focused on becoming parents that we would have totally missed what God wanted to do in us through the Radical study.  How awesome is that?!  The Lord NEVER shows me why things aren't happening like I think they should.  He always asks me to trust Him and MAYBE later He'll show me what was going on behind the scenes.  His showing me this made everything even more sweeter. 

So, have I mentioned it's been an intense month?  A really good, intense month.  And I can't wait to see what next month brings.  Happy, happy 9 months to us :)