Mysterious Ways

When we left Raleigh on Sunday morning, we knew we had a group of friends and family who supported our efforts to go to Ukraine and adopt a sweet 15 year old orphan. She is somebody who God had put directly in our path this past summer and made it clear in innumerable ways that she was our daughter.  So much attention has been drawn to what we are doing for her, but we feel almost selfish in going to get her because of how much we love her and what an impact she made on our family. We want her as much as she needs us. 

So in that heart-rending moment when Reagan realized her wallet was missing and with it, three passports, we could not help but wonder what purpose there was in this. When it became clear that there was no way to account for its loss between the Gate in RDU and the restroom immediately after deplaning in Philly and the only possibility was that it was stolen out of the backpack while we moved though the herd of people, we couldn't help but feel hopeless.  I can't forget that moment when Reagan looked at me in confusion, with tears streaming down her face and asked "why would God let this happen? Why now?"  I didn't have an answer and wondered the same thing myself. 

Yesterday I was introduced to an Ukrainian woman in Kiev who was an acquaintance of our facilitator. After exchanging pleasantries she said she saw my wife's news piece on Facebook.  I asked her how she managed to see that and she said, "who hasn't seen it? Its all over Facebook. You have much attention here because you are adopting a teenager and people don't want teenagers."  I read a post today from Reagan's cousin Lee who recounts the various people all over the country with no connection to our friends or family who are discussing our situation and praying for us.  I'm utterly stunned.  To see our friends and family go to incredible lengths of love to help us brought tears to my eyes. To see literally thousands of God's people become aware of our situation and unite to pray for our family - and for Liza is amazing. To see so many people who don't know God witness all of it and to have them root for us is exciting. And to have the cause of international adoption- and particularly of older children- come to the attention of the media and the world is awesome! 

As Reagan said in the title of her last post, hindsight is 20/20- especially when it comes to seeing the sovereign purposes of God that - in the moment- seem like mysteries.  We could think of no possible reason that God would allow the theft of the passports just as we began our journey to do something he has commanded: to care for an orphan.  But a dozen politicians, several news stories, hundreds of friends and potentially tens of thousands of strangers later, God has been praised and glorified- and we are not a moment behind our original schedule. Tom