Habakkuk 3:17-19

Matt sent me these verses this morning. So great for my heart, as we move onto the cycle that will cause us to hit the year mark for trying to get pregnant.

"Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer's; he makes me tread on my high places."

I am really struggling to find the joy in this. But I certainly am trying to shepherd my heart in that direction.

As excited as I am about adoption (and I am REALLY excited about this journey), it doesn't take away the desire to be pregnant. Each month that we don't get pregnant is still hard. I found out today that we have been assigned to a caseworker at CFC (Christian Family Care)! YAY! ….but she is out of town for the next two weeks. I just want to jump full in to this process, and at every turn I seem to have to wait. I broke down in tears over this reality that nothing seems to be happening quickly for me. I sound so impatient, and I am! I am having to work overtime in shepherding my heart back to contentment. I'm struggling.

Anyways, just a rough day here. I want my heart to be like these verses… "rejoice(ing) in the Lord" especially when things aren't going the way I desire.

Brown Bear Brown Bear

We have officially started tot school!!! Brown Bear Brown Bear is our first unit (thank you, Kristin, for many of the ideas!). I am really aiming at just having fun with Jace and if he learns something along the way, cool! While there are many words he will repeat when I ask him to, apparently Brown and Bear aren't those words. The first day he said "bra" for brown…. cool, I'll call that a win. But then he wouldn't repeat it the rest of the week. If I ask him to say the word bear, he now makes an angry face and does a low growl. We will get there. :) By the 3rd day, however, he could point to whatever animal I asked him to point to in the book. So I know he knows more than what he is communicating! 

Here is our bin of brown items!

Jace wanted to wear the brown pipe-cleaners on his head.

We started each day by reading the book! (Which is now his new favorite book for me to read)

I found him sitting in his bin, reading the book by himself. 

We played "hide and seek" with brown bear. (Which was me trying to run ahead of Jace to put the bear somewhere… he usually just watched me put it down and then would pick it up and hand it to me!) He loved this! Oh, and yes, that is a pair of shorts on his head and one sandal. Seriously just a typical day in our house… he is such a clown. 

We then colored with brown crayons and used brown stickers!

We hung his picture on the fridge and he put magnets on!

I made a brown bear for him for lunch. 

We watched a 2.5 minute video about bears! He loves this video and watched it a few times!

We tried matching heads and tails, and then a cartoon bear to a real life bear. He wanted nothing to do with this. Hopefully he will come around in time.

We tried sorting gummy bears. But this was his first reaction to seeing the gummy bears.

So we moved on to plastic counting bears. He didn't want to sort anything. So he just played with the bears in the egg carton. 

We colored a brown bear. As you can see, the coloring didn't last long. Just a few scribbles of brown. :) 

We also painted with brown paint and made a Bear face!

Daddy read Brown Bear Brown Bear to Jace.

And this is Jace pointing to the brown bear!

It was a really fun week! I am excited to review brown and bears with him throughout the upcoming weeks to see if he will start saying those words. It's such a quick overview during the week, that I hope the repetition during the upcoming weeks will solidify it more. I don't push it much. When he looses interest, we are done. So these activities don't last long at all. But we have fun during those few minutes. :) 

And so it begins...

Well, today it begins! We have filled out our application for adoption and are sending it in to Christian Family Care! After some mediocre results with some fertility testing, we are so ready to pursue adoption! I am very thankful that God has really softened my heart (as well as Matt's) to the point where we are STOKED to pursue this journey. "Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established," Proverbs 16:3. We are excited to see how God will work in this process. I will post updates as they come, but I expect the timeframe from beginning to end to take a while. :)

July!

Well, looks like it's time to catch up for July! ;)

Well, I found out that I am getting a niece!!! I am so excited. Little Dakota Madeline is already so loved! <3 

This was the first year that we participated in Chik-Fi-le's free food day! :) It was actually a lot of fun, and you can't beat free food. :) Here are a few pictures! Isn't my Jace cow so cute??? 

Matt's birthday fell on a Monday this year, and so he took the day off. With not many things planned this year, he has quite a few days-off to take before he looses them in October. So taking off his birthday was a no-brainer! We spent the day together, which was so nice. Barb watched Jace at her house during his nap and we picked him up around 5 and met most of the family at Joe's BBQ for dinner. Jace did so well, which was awesome. We don't venture out to eat much with him, so it's nice to see him doing well when we do go out to eat. Abbi works at Joe's BBQ now as a busser, and so we got to see her in action! Jace loves Abbi so much!

We also had our very first family movie night with Jace! It was so much fun. He LOVED the popcorn! We watched The Lego Movie (which seriously, is sooo funny. Matt was cracking up so much! We both want to get the DVD one day. I definitely recommend it!). Jace made it through about 45 minutes before it was bed time, but he did well. I think he liked climbing on the pillows and sitting on the couch in the dark. :)

Oh, and there's nothing like finding Jace sitting on top of the kitchen table… I tell you what, I have my hands full with how curious this kid is. Love him to pieces. 

I love me some cuddles!

I will end this post with a statement I read in Jerry Bridge's book, "Trusting God" that I've been thinking a lot about the last couple days. "I once attended a seminar on the subject of Christians and stress. One of the speaker's main points was that, if we want to live less stressful lives, we must learn to live with a single agenda: God's agenda. He pointed out that we tend to live under two agendas; ours and God's, and that the tension between them sets up stress." I stopped to think about that and found it so true in my life. I am trying to live under two agendas! My agenda included having kids between 18 months and 2 years apart… The fact that my agenda didn't happen makes me stressed! I am trying to not be the planner I like to be, and to remember that God's plan for me is already figured out. When things don't happen according to plan, that's my plan failing, not God's plan for me. In fact, all is going perfectly to his plan for me! Anyways, it gave me a new perspective on what I allow to stress me out--it is often because my agenda isn't lining up with God's agenda. I just need to put my agenda away! :) 

Okay, and one more from the same book (Man, Jerry Bridges just has a way of wording things that just stops me in my tracks and I'm like, WOW! So good.) "God never pursues His glory at the expense of the good of His people, nor does He ever seek our good at the expense of His glory. He has designed His eternal purpose so that His glory and our good are inextricably bound together. What comfort and encouragement this should be to us. If we are going to learn to trust God in adversity, we must believe that just as certainly as God will allow nothing to subvert His glory, so He will allow nothing to spoil the good He is working out in us and for us."

"But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world." 1 Timothy 6:6-7

Thursday thoughts...

Today I came across this verse while reading a blog about adoption. I so needed this reminder and I literally cried when I read it. So good for my heart today. "Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the Lord." Psalm 27:14. It's been a rough week for me. Just so many realities that this journey to grow my family isn't looking anything like I had ever imagined. I've had a lot of convictions about not making the most of my opportunities to mother the son I DO have well, all while I've been so concerned about the next *potential* child down the road. I don't get these moments back, which just led me into a puddle of tears last night. I can't believe I have an 18 month old already! Time is zooming by.

The most recent update in our journey to grow Team Pagel is that Matt and I are seriously pursuing adoption at this point. We submitted one application to an agency, only to realize that they require the money up front, which just isn't possible for us. Most agencies won't allow us to continue to pursue adoption if I were to become pregnant, so this is where I am finding myself becoming anxious. Matt and I both agree that we will pursue adoption while continuing to pray that we will get pregnant on our own. If God wants to close the doors to adoption, then He will. But we feel like we are being called in this direction. We always talked about adopting, but never assumed it would be because of months and months and months of unsuccessfully getting pregnant on our own. I've researched countless agencies, and I currently have a new favorite that I will be receiving information from in the next few days. They are located in Arizona, which is huge! And small world, but the lady I talked to from this agency knows who I am because she went to Cornerstone, and she knows who Matt is because her son went to school with him. We would so covet your prayers for us in this area. Adoption terrifies me. The cost, the home studies, the paperwork, the months of waiting to be placed, etc. The average wait time to be placed is 18 months to 2 years for most places. And I am reminded that the waiting I've already been doing has only just begun, because I have months up to years of waiting to still do if we adopt. Anyways, Matt and I will likely decide within a month if this is something we will pursue, so I'll keep you posted. Giving a child a Christian home would be incredible.

Anyways, I just so needed the reminder to "Wait on the Lord!" When I'm on the otherside of this waiting, I will look back and I will say that I wouldn't have traded it for anything. I believe that, because I have said that so many times in my life already. God has been so faithful to me and has blessed me despite my unbelief at times that His plans are best. But I can't count how many times God's timing and plans have been ten times better than what I was originally praying for and how I have thanked God for many unanswered prayers.

It's time for me to buckle up and wait. Time to stop worrying about how I'm going to get there… God is a Master planner. I can sit back, relax and find joy in the waiting.

4th of July!

Wow… for once I will be posting pictures within a week of them actually happening! :)

For the 4th of July, we went to the Ross's house to celebrate the 4th AND Matt's birthday! We had some friends there as well. I didn't get many pics, but I did take a few.

We went to Sonic for some Limeaids and used this time to grab a pic of the two of us. 

I bought some glow sticks from Target's $1 bin! (I love that section!) Jace was interested in them off and on. We went into the pantry to see them glow.

My family! <3

Mick brought some fireworks so he set those off when it got dark. Jace surprisingly really liked watching them. We think he was somewhat scared because he literally peed 7 times (he shakes when he finishes peeing, so it's pretty obvious). But he would do the sign for more and just stared at them! 

Celebrating with friends!

 This was a pic from last year's 4th of July and this years. Matt wore the exact same thing last year. haha. It's fun to see the changes! Jace actually has hair this year! Win!

More of what God is teaching me

Well here goes another post about what God is teaching me. I think I write these more for my sake than anyone else's because I need the reminders and the encouragement for my heart as I write them.

We had a guest speaker at our church this past Sunday, and he preached through Psalm 33 on how to conquer fear. He said a couple of things that just humbled me and made me see where my faith is lacking. He made the statement that for many people, our limited knowledge produces fear; but knowing that God has complete knowledge should calm those fears. He said, "You only know some things, and faith starts where your knowledge stops." So much of my anxiety or stress comes from my lack of knowledge. I don't know what the future will look like, if my family will ever grow, what the Lord has in store for me, and that leads me to be anxious and to fear the unknown. I love the statement he made when he said that faith starts where knowledge stops. It's so true. I just need to have faith in God's sovereignty and find comfort in the fact that He already knows the outcome. I don't need to know the answers. It is enough that God knows. The last verse of Psalm 33 says, "Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you." The Psalmist is asking for blessing to the same measure of his trusting in Him. Wow, what a prayer! If God's love was dependent upon the measure of how much I trusted Him, I would be a lost cause.

Another thing I can't get off my mind is the sermon by Voddie Baucham http://www.sermonaudio.com/playpopup.asp?SID=525141455405. (Thank you, Ally, for sending this to me). I have listened to this sermon twice in the last week and have cried multiple times both times I have listened to it. I plan to listen to it again this week. I am not a crier usually when I listen to sermons, but this one just so encourages/convicts my heart that I can't help but cry. It was one of those sermons that I felt like could have been written for me specifically in this moment of life.

I've also been reminding myself about a statement I read in Psalm 145 about the Lord being "kind in all his works" and just applying that truth to trials.

I read in 2 Chronicles 20 about the Israelites being worried about a great horde of people coming against them and that they didn't know what to do, so they fixed their eyes on God. The Lord told them to not be afraid or dismayed by the great horde because the battle was not theirs, but God's. He told them they did not need to fight this battle and that all they needed to do was stand firm, hold their position, and see the salvation of the Lord on their behalf. This passage again brought me to tears as I was telling Matt about it. It was just such a good reminder for me to fix my eyes on God and to be still. I always feel like I need to be doing something and really all I need to be doing is trusting God.

Well, I think I officially win the award for the most posts that are all over the place. Hopefully you were able to follow along. Sometimes it's so hard to communicate what God is teaching me.