God's plan

Ask anyone who really knows me and they will tell you that I believe, wholeheartedly, that everything happens for a reason. I don't believe in randomness nor do I believe in coincidence. In my heart I know that there is a God who has a plan for me, and that plan is so much better than any plan I could ever come up.

Now this post is not about religion nor an invitation to debate whether God exists. It is about what I believe and not about judgements regarding others' beliefs. This is about my faith.

For many years I didn't have faith nor did I believe that there was any sense to what was happening in my life. I could never understand WHY things did not work out the way I wanted them. I was angry, sad and always looking for someone to blame--usually it was the God I was brought up to believe existed.

It wasn't until I got pregnant with Sarah (and that's a story for another time) did I ABSOLUTELY believe that God existed. It was then that I realized how important it was to pray for guidance rather than to pray with a list of demands.

That was 12 years ago. I have much more patience when things do not go as I expect in my life and I've done a much better job at letting go of preconceived ideas and accepting outcomes as they happen. Now, does that mean I've stopped making decisions and just let stuff happen? Absolutely NOT! I now pray for wisdom and guidance and try to make the decisions that God is guiding me toward.

That brings me to the reason for this post; Matthew. God's plan for us has turned out to be so very different then what any of us imagined when we began our journey to bring Matthew home. In the past 19 months Matthew has been with us, it has become obvious that we were not the forever family for him. For whatever reason, we believe, we were only supposed to be the family to bring Matthew home from China. We don't know why God called us to be that family.

After much praying and seeking guidance we decided to follow a path different from what we originally set out to walk. That path has brought peace to each of us. We are confident that the choices we've made are the best choices for everyone. They were not the easiest choices, nor were they the "popular" choices. But they are the RIGHT choices.

I don't intend to post about our journey to this point. It's just not necessary to give the specifics of how we arrived here. We are here because of our love for ALL of our children and yes, that includes Matthew! We've made decisions for him that, hopefully, will allow him to develop his full potential.

Just as Matthew has a birth family that made a difficult decision for him, he has our family that also made a difficult choice. We can only hope that his first family did it out of love, because this family certainly did.

Our family is grieving over an ending that we didn't expect but also celebrating a new beginning. Please keep us all in your prayers.