New Blog! Oh Yea...& A Court Date....!

First things first...the new blog :)  Again, if you read from top to bottom, without skipping, a gold star awaits you!  Pat B...can you go for two gold stars?!

I'm a thinker.  A planner.  And this blog is no exception.  I love words, I love colors, I love design.  The new words that you see above have been everywhere I look lately.  I don't know if they're part of a trend, or if someone is trying to tell me something.

"Tell me - what is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?".

I love it.  It holds so much meaning for me.  I've got one chance.  One life.  One wild and precious life.  I want to be intentional about every decision - every relationship - every opportunity.  Another quote by the same poet says "Are you breathing, just a little bit, and calling it life?".  I see so many people just getting by.  Just passing through.  And sometimes, I want to scream 'LIVE!'.  Or 'WAKE-UP!'.  Well - Mary Oliver says it much more poetically :)

This journey - this has woken me up.  It has roused me alive.  And I hope that when I am old, and my family is surrounding me, and I'm breathing my last breaths - then I'll be able to say that I'm pleased with what I did - with what God did - with my one wild, precious life.

And Carter - he has one wild, precious life, too.  And what God has planned for him - I can't even imagine.  A rough beginning for that little boy.  But we know that God makes beautiful - wonderful - glorious things out of the dust.  I have pictured the Lord, down on His knees scraping together the ash.  Scooping up the dust, and forming it into this incredible, humanly unimaginable thing.  Beauty from the ashes.  Only God.  

And of course, it just didn't seem right to have photos of the 'orphan' Carter.  He's changed.  He's different.  He's felt love.  He's been prayed with.  He's been sung over.  He's a different boy.  So - new photos for the new boy.

Hope you like it :)  I'm sure I'll change it again when we're home for good...but this will do for now!

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Okay, okay, I'm getting there.  The court date.  Can I first say (stay with me, please!) - we never expected this when we set out on this journey.  We knew this region took longer - we knew it would likely be three trips.  We knew.  And we were okay with it - because this was our boy, and this is where he happened to be.  We planned, originally, on waiting about 4+ weeks from our SDA appointment until court.

So far, it has been 11 days since our SDA appointment.

Look what God did.  Our court date....

Holy moly.  That's 19 days from SDA to court.  That's one week from today.  Unreal.  Really - seriously - understand with me how unbelievable that is for this region.

Now - I have tried not to do this in the past...but I just can't help myself.  Here's how things should pan out...

Court - Monday, October 24th
Ten Day Wait Starts - Tuesday, October 25th
Come Back Home - Thursday, October 27th
Ten Day Wait Ends - Tuesday, November 8th (if there are no official holidays during the wait)
Head Back to Eastern Europe - Tuesday, November 8th?
Visit For A Few Days Until Gotcha Day - November 8th thru November 11th
Come Home - By Saturday, November 19th! If not sooner!

Oh.My.Word.

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So, our tickets are practically booked - we'll leave on Saturday, October 22nd, and return on Thursday, October 27th.

God is so, so good.  Unreal.

One Thing I Know For Sure: We're comin' - buddy!