Mining for diamonds

Today when I came down from teaching school to make lunch, I casually glanced outside the back windows. That is when I noticed that our patio set was missing from the deck. Hmmm... I don't remember moving the patio set, and I bet the dog didn't move it... so I went outside to check it out, and sure enough it is missing along with half the chairs. The two chairs I DO see are mangled up against the grill-- uh-oh. When I walked to the end of my deck, there were the remains of my patio set, smashed glass covering the ground and the other two chairs wrapped around each other a few feet away. I guess the wind blew sorta hard last night. Later that afternoon, as I was attempting to clean up the mess-- not easy when tempered glass shatters and blows all over the side of your yard-- I tried to look at the bright side of things... I was sick of that set anyway, the glass was always dirty and I was constantly cleaning it; that set has had a "good" life-- we've kept it through at least three moves and it WAS our FIRST purchase when we bought our first home back in Texas... That got old, so then I pretended that I was mining for diamonds-- as the sun hit the teeny, tiny, glass pieces, I imagined I was somewhere deep in Africa-- let's say, hmmm-- I know! Ethiopia! So I was deep in Ethiopia in a diamond mine (I have no idea if there are diamond mines in Ethiopia) and with each glittering "jewel" I picked up, it brought me one step closer to paying for our adoption... that made me laugh at my weirdness, but it, too, got old. So, in the end I decided that if I can fill the bag enough to make it look impressive, then I will have something to write about on my blog, tonight-- which, by the way, I am becoming highly addicted, to. That one worked. I even started on the second bag, before I had to stop and go in to make dinner.

Those weren't the only diamonds I was mining for today. At some point in the morning I had this realization that there was no such thing as adopting two unrelated children from Ethiopia-- somehow, I thought we could do this, thus not have to wait as long as people adopting sibling groups. Well, that joke is on me. So now I am mining for all the "diamonds" of positive thoughts I can muster about why it will be good to have to wait so long (9-12 months). For instance, it is still a LOT shorter than waiting to adopt from most other countries-- or even in the U.S.! And we still don't know if and when Tony will deploy! There, I said it. Tony is probably (99% probably) going to deploy sometime in the next year for six months. If our wait was shorter, it is highly likely that we would get our referral/court date/travel either while he is gone, right before he leaves, or as soon as he gets home. None of those are ideal-- what is ideal, anyway? That's for another blog. Back to topic-- mining for diamonds. In the end, I most certainly feel held by the love of the Father. When life looks SO uncertain and SO unpredictable, there is nothing to do but have faith in the One who knows every single hair on my head-- even the new gray ones; cares deeply about the details and is ABSOLUTELY big enough to handle this one, too :)

That's some good diamond mining!!
Grace and Peace,
Shari