Unerring wisdom, divine love & 11.11.11

So it's been a hectic week around here. Four photography sessions in just three days. Five if you count our own family's that took place this afternoon. These were long overdue! We haven't really had a formal sitting since Joel came home. Of course there are a million of the kids, a half million of me with the kids or Jase with the kids. But the five of us all together? Those are far and few between oddly enough. Tara graciously volunteered to snap a few of us this fall for our dossier that will hopefully be trekking across the ocean sometime in February 2012.

We actually went to a local cemetery for our pictures. Sounds crazy. But this place is super old and I just love so many things about it. I never even knew it existed until this week when a client asked to go there for their session. Love that...new locations to shoot in really excite me.

I need to get out more.

Anyway, we decided to meet Tara there at 4 and we would go a little early for me to snap some individuals of the kids. Not that we really need them. But you know, to round it all out and everything. :)

I didn't put much thought into it. I mean, at 1:00, Kennedy asked me what we were going to wear. I told her that I guessed I better start to think about that! I wanted us to coordinate but not be totally matchy matchy. And I wanted to take a little pic of Seth to have in a shot or two. Not sure if that really worked or not. There may have been a glare on the frame or it may look like to much of an afterthought. But I just remember when we were waiting for Joel and how I wanted him in our pictures that year. Today was no different. We are here. And Seth is there.

Weep. Weep.

Lately, I've been managing really well. I've not cried in a couple of weeks. :) I'm just staying prayerful and optimistic that he is okay. I daydream about him in foster care with a loving family and how he is probably now pretty mobile. The report we got that was dated 10.12, said that he was just learning to walk. I imagine he's pretty close to, if not already, mastering that by now.

I try not to think about him becoming blue. I have learned in recent days to put that out of my head. God is teaching me so many things.

Patience.

Trust.

Faith.

I was reading Spurgeon and this is what he had to say this evening...

"...Unerring wisdom ordained your circumstances and selected for you the safest and best conditions....Remember this: if any other condition had been better for you than the one you are in, divine love would have put you there. You have been placed by God in the most suitable circumstances....Take up, your own daily cross. It is the burden best suited for your shoulder, and will prove most effective in making you perfect "in every good word and work" {2Thess. 2:17)

So while I'm not going nuts here wondering why our homestudy has been complete for a week and it's still not sitting in WACAP's inbox or if we will be found among the current I-800A families waiting 75+ days for immigration approval from Homeland Security, or if our dossier will even be ready for China by February...I'm thinking about it a lot but resting in the knowledge that we are just where we are supposed to be.

And all of those things must happen. And even while we were sitting in a pile of leaves this afternoon while Tara snapped pictures of us holding a picture of Seth, those thoughts were there.

We are here. He is there. And so much still has to happen for the opposite of those two statements to be true. But, unerring wisdom and divine love has set us here and let him be there for this time. For this day. This 11.11.11 as it were.

Next year though, when the next of these quirky number kind of days happens, it will be 12.12.12...my birthday. And I'm pretty sure my four children will be piled all around me and I will be grateful to the unerring wisdom and divine love who put them there.