This is the middle....

This is the middle, the in between, the peanut butter and jelly that gets us to obedience. I have become a firm believer that sometimes God uses steps to reach us. Sometimes even when he says leap, you sit on your butt and wail "no I'm scared." So God must chuckle and say "oh you stubborn little children, don't you know that what I have is better that what you are doing, now do what Daddy says, here I will make it easier for you little turkeys. We will take baby steps."
That is what we did, baby steps...at first. We slowly filled out paperwork. A little here and a little there. After that verse I waited a week or two and then I basically verbally vomitted all over Nash. I just rushed out with everything and totally overwhelmed it, needless to say it shut him down, at first. Then we randomly got an email about a family matter concerning some kids who were currently not placed with their mom. This was a step. Would we be willing to have them come to our house? We prayed about it and decided that yes, if the courts and family decided that is what they wanted we would. We thought well man, that was easy! Forget the paperwork and homestudy God just dropped this in our laps. I mean I jokingly prayed that it sure would be nice to have kids just fall into our laps but I didn't really think it would happen! This situation, however, did not pan out. And when I realized I was ok with that, I realized that was not the situation God had for us. That sometimes he places things in our life to make us ready. It has been neat to talk with Nash about all the things that have gone on over the past year and see what He has done.

"He who heeds the word wisely will find good, And whoever trusts in the Lord, happy is he."
Prov 16:20
Bible study- I actually followed through with bible study this year. yes applaud, it's ok. I usually go a few times and then stuff comes up and I drop off. But this year I went every week unless we were sick or out of town. It was awesome. We were in Esther. All year. What I found interesting was the main message seemed to be obedience. I noticed that the gals talked a lot about this and listening to God.
"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. "
Philippians 1:6
"being confident of the very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ."

These are a few of the verses I have bookmarked...just a few, from my time in bible study. God reminding me that what He has started He will complete, we just need to trust, pray, and obey. Mind you this is such a large leap into something we have never done before. But we started thinking that we always tell our kids "listen and obey." That they have to obey us, just like we have to obey God. If we had confirmation that this is what we were supposed to do and we didn't obey our Father what would we teach our children. Sure, they would never know. But we would know. Always. We would always know that we had a chance to live life and show our kids what it means to obey and move when God says and that we didn't. I know that I would always wonder what might have been. We won't have to wonder, we choose to obey what God is saying and what God is promising to our family.