God's Timing

God is in the details- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Tomorrow morning, my mother and I will board a plane for New York City to pick up Tessa who will be arriving on a plane from Africa. We should arrive about two hours before Tessa. We will leave 6 hours after we arrive. Back to Minneapolis--an additional passenger in tow. There are many details, but God is in control of them.

Consider the last several months--God has been ever present. Last summer, we felt a sense of urgency to get our home study done quickly, but God slowed the process. If He hadn't, we would not have been able to adopt Tessa. In October, we were given a much quicker embassy date than we anticipated. Later, because of Heather's cancer, we had to adjust some of our paperwork--in fact, it had to go through 4 different federal offices. We were told that the average time for processing on the second step was 2.5 months. Ours took about 2 weeks. I was told the third step would take 2-4 weeks. Ours took 4 days. We had to rely entirely on God to provide an embassy date for getting Tessa's visa the following day. It was given.

Another unusual circumstance was that our social worker was supposed to come back to the USA last week. Due to unforeseen circumstances (another child's visa not coming through), she stayed in Africa an additional week. We were still unsure because the flights from Africa to the USA didn't fit with our her schedule. In fact, she emailed Heather earlier in the week and said "I just don't know how that I can make this work, I am sorry." Things changed and she adjusted her schedule again. This provided enough time to get Tessa's paperwork through 3 different offices. Barrier after barrier has been knocked down. Heather spoke with a travel agent yesterday who marveled at the rapidity of our process the mercurial changes and asked how it happened. She replied, "we have over 100 people praying for us."

I have been jointly praying for God's timing, but also a December 17th embassy date, fully aware of the hurdles, indeed the earthly impossibility, of it happening. The heavenly irony is that we didn't get a date on the 17th, we got one on the 16th, which I believe was God's clear message to me that He loves me, he loves Tessa, but that He is in control of the clock.

We couldn't do it.
Our social worker couldn't do it.
Only God could.
And He Did.

For still the vision awaits its appointed time;
it hastens to the end—it will not lie.
If it seems slow, wait for it;
it will surely come; it will not delay.
-Habakkuk 2:3