A long week and it's only Tuesday

It feels like it's been a long week, and it is only Tuesday! Ted and I just returned from being in Albany all day. Today was the day for us to go to the Homeland Security office and be finger printed for the adoption. Since we were going to be in Albany already (a two hour drive from our home), I also took several documents that had to be authenticated at the state level with us, and Ted dropped me off on State St. where I ran in and did that. An authentication is something I had previously never heard of. For those of you who, like me, have never heard of such a thing, an authentication is a paper that says that the notary who notarized the document is indeed a licensed notary in the State of NY (in our case). For some states (NY being one) the documents must be authenticated at the county level before they can be authenticated at the state level, so yesterday I headed out in the morning for the hour and a half drive to Delhi to do that. As I wound my way past the farms and homes, taking in the last of the fall leaf show, I prayed confessing my fears, my self focus, and my wrong thinking, asking God for provision for all the different details in the adoption and in other areas of life, specifically thanking Him for what He's teaching me in the hard things, even though I don't feel very thankful. Lately it seems like there is a lot of hard....good friends moving away, my nephew and his family as he continues to battle with leukemia, our friends, the Bricks, whose daughter Mandy is trying to emerge from a coma as they spend day and night beside her, another friend who just found out he has cancer, others in our life who are making poor choices, sinful choices, that cause suffering for themselves and the others who are in their lives, and the thought of an orphanage full of kids in Haiti waiting to go home to be with their forever families, yet sometimes being sent back with the very families who gave them up to the orphanage, for reasons that don't make sense to our minds. It just seems like the evidence of the Fall is all around me. I had to get a hold of my thinking yesterday and remind myself of who God is and that He is not for a minute out of control, and He lets the trials sit on us for exactly the right time, not too long and not too short. I also had to remind myself that it isn't about my ideas of comfort or how things should go. God is God, and it is His glory and our ultimate transformation to be conformed to the image of His son that He's concerned with; therefore, He is willing to allow all kinds of things in our lives to bring about repentance and to bring glory to Himself. I find as we are studying Philippians that I am not at all like Paul (or Christ). I still tend to be more focused on my idea of how things should be and I hold very tightly to those things, but God, in His eternal goodness and mercy, brings things that pry my fingers loose. Sometimes it is little things that reveal my wanting to be in control, like finding out I cannot go see Spendy in December. Today I had a little melt down when I found out, at the Homeland Security office, that they are 6-8 weeks behind schedule in processing their adoption stuff. The NY office's turn around time is normally one week. Our home study will arrive there early next week to wait in the stack with all the others to be processed. I have been planning on going to Haiti in December for the last couple months and have been working like a mad woman to have everything ready in time. This morning I realized how I am really not in control at all. As the tears fell down below my sun glasses, my sweet husband reminded me of God's sovereignty. I am so glad he was with me today. Let me end by saying a few things off the top of my head that God showed me today. 1.) Ted was with me to comfort me and remind me of the truth. 2.)I had a day alone with him, which is all too rare, and we had time to talk about all kinds of things. 3.)I had not yet purchased my plane tickets. 4.)This might allow us to be able to be going down with Lori Mills (a friend from church who may also be adopting, who is not excited about traveling alone to Haiti.) 4.)Gretchen does not think we will lose much time because in December people go home and paperwork ends up sitting on people's desks anyway, so even if we'd gone done to Haiti, it probably wouldn't have made things go any faster. 5.)I was reminded again of who my attention needs to be fixed upon.