"Room"

This blog's title was chosen, as I'm sure most are, very carefully. I've written primarily about the "more" part of the title - there will be more children in our home within the year if all goes well! More children, more love, more dishes, laundry, more time spent in the van going to therapy and appointments, more opportunities to watch the variety of different relationships between and among our children developing. Hopefully more sleep is part of that deal, too, though I'm not planning on it. ;)

Over the last week or two, the "room" part of the title has been rising in my awareness. For years we've tossed around the idea of adding on to this house. We live in the house that Matt's grandfather had built when he was married in 1939, and they raised Matt's dad and three daughters in this house. We've always said that despite the fact that times have changed that if they could raise four kids here, we could, too. Of course, Matt's grandparents weren't also trying to home school and run three small businesses out of the house as well. (Grandpa's truck farming was a small business, but it's only one, not three, and most of the mess for that happens outside of the house!) But now, even with our family growing beyond that "magic" number, we still knew we could make this house work. But...

The purpose of the blog is two-fold: first, to share about K's adoption, and secondly, to keep those who are interested up to date on the progress of the addition that we are putting onto the house, starting hopefully in May - "Room for more".

As odd as it seems, the decision to move towards the addition began before the adoption process for K began. For a long time we've told our parents that we would love to have them stay with us when they are unable or no longer want to live on their own. With the death of Matt's dad last July, many things were set in motion with his mother. She's always said that she wanted to stay in her house for a year after her husband died (his cancer was expected to be terminal), but what will happen beyond that year? We considered at that point doing a small cantilievered bump out of our current (very small) guest room so she would have the opportunity to take that room (again, this is all back when we still thought our income was way too low for international adoption, and "The Wall" was still fully in place, so we had no other plans for that room - that room is now set to become Owen and K's room.) However, in talking with her, she commented that if she came to stay with us that she would really need her own bathroom, which shifted work on the house to the addition we'd considered for years - there would be room for her to have a fairly private "suite" with two bedrooms and a bathroom. We want to be able to have this space so that she has the option of coming to stay with us if that ends up being the direction taken.

And we so hope that she will come. We currently bring supper over to her house six days a week, and it fills me with such joy to see Grandma and our four little ones laughing and romping and singing together. It saddens me to see how our society has become so separated into peer groups when there is so much to offer across peer groups - we all benefit! Matt and I got a tiny taste of this during the first year and a half of our marriage when we moved into this house with Matt's grandfather. "Families" are not only best for orphans, but also for moms and dads and grandparents, too! A number of adoption blogs that I've seen refer to Psalm 68:6 where God is shown to be the one who "sets the lonely in families" and I would have to say there's nothing about that to make it apply only to children! Our family has room for more.

2013 is going to be a year of many changes for us, and a year of learning more fully than we ever have what it means to rely completely on God's provision for us. There are so many demands on our time, our finances, our emotions, but God has been so very obvious and intentional at showing us over the last year how he is orchestrating every detail, from the very small to the very large to complete his purposes, and so we are humbly waiting and watching for him to work in this, too. For various reasons, we are committing to doing this work (as well as the adoption) without incurring any debt. We have no idea how this is going to work, but we don't have to; if God is leading us in this direction, we are trusting that he will provide what we need as we do our best to follow him step by step.

We are so grateful for those of you who are holding us up in prayer as we walk forward. And we hope that as you follow along as I have a chance to post updates that you will be encouraged to see how very awesome, awe-inspiring our God is - this is what we are expecting to see as we watch this year unfold! I hope to have a chance before too long to post about some of the ways that we've already seen him providing for this project in ways that we would not have even dreamed on our own.

(And for those of you who are interested, I have a tiny peek at what we're doing on the house up on our design website.)