Picker Point

At that time, my life was pretty well summed up by this quote by Francis Chan. He says, “Lukewarm people do not live by faith; their lives are structured so they never have to. They don’t have to trust God if something unexpected happens-they have their savings account. They don’t need God to help them-they have their retirement plan in place. They don’t genuinely seek out what life God would have them live-they have life figured and mapped out. They don’t depend on God on a daily basis-their refrigerators are full and, for the most part, they are in good health. The truth is, their lives wouldn’t look much different if they suddenly stopped believing in God.” I was lukewarm, my life was so comfortable, and I knew exactly what I wanted to be doing for the next ten years. I wanted three or four more kids that looked exactly like me. I wanted a nice house, good friends, and nothing unplanned or unexpected. I was living in my comfort zone, and I had no plans to leave.

But you see, I don’t think God thinks much of comfort zones. I don’t think He is too concerned with us being comfortable because I think we are most useful to Him when we are out of our comfort zones. Sometimes we are thrown out of our comfort zones by circumstances completely out of our control, like loss, or sickness, or the behavior of someone close to us. But I think sometimes God asks us to step out voluntarily.

In fact, when we look in the Bible, we see Him repeatedly calling people to take a step of faith outside of their comfort zones. In Gen. 6, God calls Noah to build an ark . . . uncomfortable. In Gen. 12, God calls Abram to leave his family, his country and go to a new land . . . uncomfortable. I would guess that just about anyone in the Bible that we think of as godly or faithful is someone who willingly followed God out of their comfort zones . . . think about David, Daniel, Esther, Mary, Joseph, Peter, Paul . . . Jesus.

It wasn’t long until Casey and I began to feel God calling us to adopt. At first I kept asking Him, “Please, we’ll do it, but later . . . not NOW.” But God was insistent, and soon we couldn’t ignore Him anymore. So we agreed to pursue adoption, and soon it was clear that God was calling us to Ethiopia. I wish I could tell you that I have always felt a longing for Africa, but the truth is that as a little girl one of my greatest fears was that God was going to make me be a missionary in Africa. So I didn’t just feel like He was asking me to take a step of faith with this adoption, I felt like He was asking me to take a flying leap of faith.

From the very beginning, we knew that God was going to have to come through for us or it would never work.
First, there was the issue of money. International adoptions can cost $25,000 or more, and we had no idea where the money would come from. But let me tell you . . . He provided every penny. We had so many generous friends and family contribute, we held fundraisers, garage sales, Casey worked extra jobs, and we had all the money when we needed it.

We also knew that it would be a challenge to adopt a child with a different background and ethnicity than us. We encountered some interesting responses when we first announced our news. Shouts of joy, blank stares and everything in between. “A black baby???” was the typical first response. “Yes,” we would say, “that’s the kind they have in Africa.” But eventually, as our friends and family saw how committed we were to the process, they began to get excited too.

On April 6, about eight months after we started the adoption process, I got a phone call from our agency. They had a little boy for us. He was 10 weeks old, and tiny. He had been very sick and malnourished, and we later learned from the nannies that cared for him that there was a period of time when their prayer was simply that he would open his eyes. We were so excited to be matched with our little boy, but it was a scary time . . . his pictures didn’t look great. We were concerned about his weight, his health, and development. But we kept plugging along, waiting, praying, and hoping.

And in late July, we boarded a plane to bring home our baby from Ethiopia. You would think that after all of our praying and waiting that I would be thrilled and excited to meet my baby boy. And I was, but I was also more anxious and worried than I have ever been before. This was still uncomfortable. God had been so faithful to us, but there were still so many what ifs . . . What if the baby didn’t like us, what if we didn’t like him . . . what if our older son Caleb hated us forever for bringing this baby home . . . what if the baby was sick . . . what if there were lasting issues from his malnutrition . . . the worries went on and on. I was way out of my comfort zone.

But we went in faith . . . took our flying leap . . . and God delivered in every possible way. Our trip to Ethiopia was amazing. We will never be the same. We were blessed over and over again, every single day. Our faith was strengthened as we were stripped of our comforts and securities and had to trust Him completely. We were united with our precious son, we had an amazing, life-changing meeting with his birth mother, we spent time ministering to orphans and learning more about their needs, we saw the beautiful Ethiopian countryside, and God replaced my fear of Africa with an overwhelming love and passion for it’s beautiful people.

Almost a year to the day after we first began our adoption process, we landed back in Little Rock with our baby boy. In a moment that will be etched in my soul forever, we were reunited with our older son, and our family and friends. A friend compared the pictures of our arrival with the angels welcoming a soul into heaven, and that is how I will always remember it.

Psalm 68:6 says that, “God sets the lonely in families,” and I am so, so thankful that we were the family that He chose for our precious little Josiah, who, by the way, is almost 10 months old now, and a big, happy, healthy baby. I cannot imagine my life without him, but what if I had said no? What if I had ignored God long enough that He finally quit talking?

This experience has made me realize how confining my Comfort Zone can be. When I look back at what I thought I wanted, it looks boring, mundane, ordinary. And I don’t think God wants us to be any of those things. What other wonderful blessings have I missed because I didn’t want to leave my comfort zone, because He was calling me to a land I could not see? Now that I have seen that God’s plan is abundantly better than mine, I want to trust Him more, to follow Him further.

God has completely changed our lives. We are burdened now with the orphans of Ethiopia, but not in a sad, depressing way . . . in a joyful, hopeful way. All I can think about is how many more orphans can we squeeze into our home . . . or maybe we should just move to Africa so we can take care of more. I can’t wait to see what God has for us next.