Remembering

In a Bible Study I'm doing we recently talked about Passover.  As I was thinking about the Jews having a celebration every year to commemorate the Exodus, where God freed the Israelites from slavery and brought them out of Egypt, it struck me how powerful it is to have set times to remember what God has done in your life.

One year ago today we were waiting on a phone call to let us know that we'd passed Ethiopian court in our adoption of our littlest girl.  You can read this post from last year to really get a feel for the experience.

We had already visited her, played with her, testified in court, said "good-bye" to her, left her in an orphanage, and traveled back to America to await news that our case had actually passed court, making our little girl legally our daughter.  We waited two and a half months!  Very, very long months where we had no idea how this whole story was going to go for our family.  Would we pass or would the whole thing fall through and this little girl we'd already fallen in love with was no going to be ours?  How long would it take to be able to bring her home?  How would she transition into our family and life in America?  Would our family be strong enough to handle the challenges or would we buckle under the stress of it all?

There were so many unknowns!

But, God has done BIG things in a year!

One year later it isn't all sunshine and roses, but she's ours, an orphan no more!  She's home!  She loves her family and we love her!  She's healthy!  She speaks English!   She goes to preschool!

And she recently prayed this prayer without coaching from us:

"Dear God, thank you that I'm so happy in my family.  Help other children who don't have families to be adopted."

We must never, never forget what He's done!

Psalm 126:3 "The LORD has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy."


Find more Thankful Thursday here.