The Sixth Chair

I'm really excited to get this blog started and most of all, I have had this story burning within me for over a year now and I'm bursting at the seams to share it. Now is the time!

For nearly four years our family of five has sat at our round breakfast table with six chairs, one usually being empty. I look at that sixth chair with hope and anticipation for who God would have to fill it. At first I was convinced it would be a fourth biological child. After a failed pregnancy attempt, I wasn't quite sure what God's plans were. About six months later our dear friend Allison lost her mother. She and her mom had already been a part of our family but after Patt's death, we offered for Allison to live with us. When explaining this to a friend in an email, my friend reminded me of the sixth chair at our table. She said, "You see, God did have a plan for that sixth chair!". Allison has been a joy and delight to our family. I had also always desired to pass on the blessing that many other families had shared with me when I found myself lonely and without a family before I married John. God fulfilled this desire in me by allowing us to return this blessing to Allison.

"God sets the lonely in families." Psalm 68:6

Now our dear Allison is about to begin a new family of her own through marriage to an incredible man with a Godly family. (Although she and Trevor had BETTER plan on spending at least one major holiday with us each year) God has opened up the sixth chair at our table once more.

About sixth months ago God began to stir in John and my hearts an awareness of the need in the church to be more deliberate in caring for widows and orphans. "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27

For the next 3 weeks I was an emotional wreck. God spoke into my heart and assured me that our sixth chair did have a divine purpose and that I didn't misunderstand God's desire to give us another child to fill that chair. What I was reminded of was that "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts....This is for the Lord's renown" Isaiah 55:8-9 (&13). We believe that God does have a child for us that simply was not born of my womb. We have the divine opportunity to bring rescue, hope, and blessing to a life that might otherwise be filled with loss and hardship. We are now in the process of being trained and certified to adopt through the foster care system. We are in a state of complete trust for God to bring this child into our home in His timing. Would you join with us in prayer as we wait?

Psalm 128:1-6 ESV
Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways! You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. The Lord bless you from Zion! May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life!

Our Family including Trevor and Allison