A smile

Yesterday we had a wonderful day with friends of ours - the best kind of friends - the ones where you can hardly get settled in the living room before they're pulling their Bibles out, and we ours, and we spend the next three hours sharing words of encouragement from it with each other, where God is stretching us, and what we are seeing with fresh eyes, and we so thrive on those times. These are friends who understand with us our desire to build this addition and fund this adoption without incurring any debt, not simply because it would be "nice" to not have debt, but believing that God is specifically directing us to this as he pushes us forward into this year. Just this morning Matt and I were reading 1 Corinthians 7 with our Sunday School class, and this one tiny part is in there: "You were bought with a price; do not become bondservants of men." (v23) If you read the surrounding verses, it's clear that this isn't talking directly about debt, but there is a principal there that IS connected to debt - having a mortgage - debt - puts us in a position where we are bound to someone else - we owe something every month to someone other than God (the bank!) and we've gotten a few glimpses already of the freedom that we have to put this addition in particular completely into God's service if we are not bound to anyone else for it.

As we take on this seemingly impossible endeavor, it was good to be with people who are able to encourage us to continue trusting in God, trusting that if he is calling us to these things, he will provide us with what we need to accomplish them. As our friends were leaving (at 9:45pm!!!) I for some reason checked our email, and for some reason very rudely (since we had company!) read one of the emails that had come in over the seven hour time they'd been here, and 20 minutes earlier we'd received an email from a sweet young couple we know who said that although they know it is kind of weird, had both independently decided that they wanted to put some of their tithe every month toward helping to bring K home. The amount they're offering is nothing that's going to "solve" all of the needs that we will have this year, but it was such a clear, deliberate smile from God - a very tangible way for him to say that he has this all planned out, and that in little ways and big ways of all sorts he really is going to carry out what he has shown us! Wow!!

I am going to try to record as many of these kinds of things as I can on this blog so when this is all done (though the adventure of trusting God in this life is NEVER done!) our family has a way to look back and be amazed at all the pieces working together, and I hope that for those of you who read along that you will also be encouraged to follow him with undivided devotion (also from 1 Corinthians 7, this time verse 35) knowing that he is able to supply everything you need to do what he calls you to do.

~~~

On a  more mundane note, Matt and Owen this afternoon picked up the sink for the new bathroom which we had ordered. Lowes had a decent "spend this much and get $25 off or spend that much and get $10 off" coupon, and since the sink we wanted was a little more than "this much" and the integral towel bar (sold separately) was "that much" we thought this was a sensible time to order those and spend $35 less than we would otherwise. We're slowly starting to accumulate some of these kinds of things. Menards had their "15% off everything in the bag" sale a while ago, and we used that to pick up electrical outlets and switches - the kind of thing that fits easily into a paper bag, and isn't the type of item that's going to have a big promotional sale on it! Every little bit makes it feels more real...