John 5:1-6
"Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem or a feast of the Jews. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethsda and which is surrounded by five covered colonades. Here a great number of disable people used to lie - the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, "Do you want to get well?""
When I heard Daryl read from this passage this morning I thought to myself "huh, that's what I have been for the past 2 1/2 years,an invalid. I was unable to move on, unable to accept that God was in control of my life and not me. I was unable to truely live again ... because I just layed there in my dark and dreary pit of a life that I had created. I wasn't able to see at that time that it was really myself that had created that pit ... and that it was only me that was in the way of moving on. That I was the only one keeping myself from really being able to live. That question that Jesus asked the invalid in the story seems so simple ..."Do you want to get well?" That man had layed there for 38 years and made excuse after excuse of why he was still an invalid. Finally it just took Jesus being blunt with the man and telling him to "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk." What an easy thing to say, but such a hard thing to do when you just don't believe. This passage really brought back how dark these past couple of years have been ... and how much of my life I let slip by being miserable and losing faith each and everyday. It makes me sad to think of how much I hated God during this dark period in my life. How much bittness I had towards him ... Right now I am trying to figure out how I came out of that period in my life. I don't really remember making a conscious decision to "Get up!" But I feel so thankful that I am not in that same place anymore. I am so glad that God never gives up on us ... because if He did he should have given up on me a long time ago.
:0) I kind of feel like this passage was a gift to my soul this morning. Last week I started feeling really overwhelmed by everything that is going on. It's all because I have had some down time with the whole adoption stuff and my mind was able to start thinking ... always a bad thing! haha But I just started thinking about how impossible this was going to be to save up this much money. This passage really woke me up and made me realize that the thoughts I was having this last week are exactly where I was and where my mind always went during that really dark period in my life. I don't want to go back there ... I am refusing! So I am just going to "GET UP!" and trust God in this amazing adventure He has Alya and I on right now.
We recieved a call last Tuesday (1-26-10) from Bundle of Hope telling us that we were officially approved into the agency. They also told us to consider having our profile be reviewed by a birthmother. If we agreed to that and were chosen then we would need to put down $6,000. When I got off the phone with her I just started crying ... it hadn't even been a week since we had mailed off our application and here we were getting a call about a possble match. How quickly all of this is going! Alya and I prayed about it that night and decided that it just wasn't time yet ... and we felt total peace with that decision. I would have loved to tell them yes, but again that would have been me taking control ... and I just don't want to do that anymore. We have a few more fundraisers in the works right now. Tossing around some ideas of some coming up, and really praying that we get approved for a potentially really big one! We should be hearing back from someone on that in the next couple of days hopefully. We still need to get our home study sent in from FSS (hoping our new one for this year is done quickly so that we can send in a copy of that one since the one I have is from last year) We also have to get a Lifebook completed which is kind of like a little scrapbook for the birthmothers to look at when they are selecting an adoptive family for their baby. I typed up fundraising letters today and copied and mailed out 53. I am just in constant prayer about our journey all day long. I dream about it ... dream about our baby. I just can't wait for that day to come ... praying that it will be soon. Praying that God moves in powerful ways!
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