Four Months!

Tomorrow marks our 4 month DTE (Dossier to Ethiopia) date! In some ways it has flown by. Other days it seems like its been an eternity. We continue to trust God's perfect plan. We pray for our little guy every day. Keep up the prayers for the many families waiting for referrals, court dates,and embassy dates! Things are still slow, but we continue to trust.

I (Tami) have to be completely transparent for a few minutes and share something from my heart. Anyone who knows me knows that I struggle with the "martha" syndrome. I'm just being honest. I have a constant list in my head of what needs to be done now and just can't wait for anything. I love it when the house is clean and everything is in its place and I tend to make these "things" that need done my priorities. My husband attempts to very nicely remind me that the world will not blow up if the dishes aren't ALL out of the sink or if there is a piece of clothing on the floor, but I don't always want to listen. Now, if I'm being completely transparent these things also turn into worries about anything and everything. I can definitely do my share of worrying. I honestly think my husband cannot even believe some of the things that I've worried about. The reason I'm sharing this is because this week was one of those weeks. We hadn't really been in the house all week. I went to work, came home, made dinner, and off we went. I dropped into bed exhausted at night. By Wednesday I was feeling a tad overwhelmed and knew that A and I were going to House Church by ourselves due to the fact that Josh had band practice. I rushed home and was home by 4:15. I continued to rush to pack lunches for the next day, get A in her pajamas and fed, get food made for house church and made sure the house wasn't a wreck. Meanwhile A had taken a black marker to her kiddie table. Really? ACK! By the time my feet hit the front door of House Church I was in no mood to share Jesus with others! I just wanted to start the whole day over. I had previously read the Bible passage for HC that night but I'm not sure I had really read it. In fact its a passage I've read lots before and I thought I knew well...

1 Peter 5:6-7 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.

You see, the part that I really hadn't ever paid much attention to was the HUMBLE part. If I am humbling myself before my savior I don't think that means running around my house so that I think its "perfect." NOPE. In fact, I'm sure that I can be pretty prideful about all of it sometimes. So, if I am in fact NOT humbling myself before the Lord how can I cast my anxieties on Him? It hit me. I can't. I wish I could go back to when I stepped in the door at 4:15 and stop. I wish I would have prayed for strength. I wish I would have humbled myself before the Lord instead of worrying about the things that I thought were important. I didn't. I'm so thankful that God is teaching me more about what being one of his children looks like. I'm going to try and humble myself before Him. I'm going to try and cast my anxieties on him. You'll probably laugh when I say I can even start worrying about whether I'm actually doing that or not. So, I'm going to try and remember that I will fail. I am, after all, not perfect. Yet, I do know that the more we humble ourselves, the easier it will become. The more we humble ourselves, the less important things like dishes and laundry seem. The more we humble ourselves, the more important loving others like Jesus becomes.