Birthday Celebration

My birthday is in the middle of June and my (step)sister's birthday is at the end of July so for the last two summers my dad and step-mom have come up to Indiana to celebrate with us. It is such a fun treat to have them come up and spoil us for a few days. They stopped in Columbus on Friday night and we went out to eat with Heath's parents. On Saturday they left and went to Indy. Heath and I went up that night so we could all celebrate together. We of course documented the evening...

My sister is having her first baby in November. Can't wait to meet my nephew!

       
                                   Heath and Andrew showing off their "pregnant" bellies too

My dad and I 

We are so thankful they were able to come up!

3 years

Last week Heath and I celebrated our three year anniversary. It is so hard to believe that 3 years has already gone by. Where does the time go? I am beyond blessed to be the wife to this amazing man. He is so loving and good to me. I realize how much of a blessing he is to me.

For my birthday/anniversary present, Heath got us tickets to Cirque Du Soleil. Oh my word, it was amazing!!! If you have never been you have to go. It is unbelievable. We went right in between my birthday and anniversary so it was great timing. We went out to eat and then headed up to Indy for the show. It was such a great present. Here are some pictures from our outing that night and on our actual anniversary:

So thankful to have spent these last 3 years being Heath's wife!

On a side note, we forgot to eat our cake from our wedding on our fist and second anniversary so why not our third?!? Heath was less than thrilled to do this, but let me tell you that cake was just as good 3 years later as it was the day we first ate it.

Looking forward to many more years together!

Update on our life...

Sorry again that I haven't really updated in a while. Here is the update of the last few weeks...

First of all, we are under contract on our house in West Lafayette!!!!!!!!!! I don't think I can do enough exclamation points. We are so thrilled. We are suppose to close on July 30th so we are praying all goes well! It's funny because the last time I wrote a real post I talked about how God was telling us no for everything (our house selling included) He sold it that week!! It was so refreshing for us to see God do that. 

God has also provided for us here in that Heath's dad is allowing us to stay with him (which means no double mortgage-how do people afford that anyway?) God has also opened up another neat opportunity here for us when it comes to housing. Our sweet friends the Magnuson's are going to be going to China for 3 months for his work and have offered for us to stay in their house while they are gone! What a neat way for God to provide for us. We are super bummed they will be leaving because they're our only real friends here right now, but we are extremely grateful for their generosity and graciousness to us. So next week we will be moving into their house! 

During the time we are living there we are going to be looking for a house. We have already started looking at houses, but haven't really found anything that we like or that we think is a good deal. We are thankful that we don't have to be in a hurry to find something and that we can take our time and be patient. 

As far as the adoption, there's been no real progress. We had our profile book presented twice this week and were told no both times. It's hard to explain how it feels. On one hand we know God has perfect timing and He has the perfect baby for us, but on the other hand it's just hard and sad. We want to be parents so bad and want to bring our sweet baby home and it's just hard when we get told no. We have only presented 4 times and most people present a lot more than that so we are prepared, but it doesn't mean we're not disappointed at the same time. We also know that we have to buckle in for the long haul and can't expect it to go fast, but it's still disappointing. In a weird way it's like infertility. Every month I would hope I was pregnant only to be disappointed. Every time we present I hope we get chose and every time I have been disappointed. It's the whole hope and disappointment cycle. 

I think I get a little cynical too in all of it too. I think "it figures we didn't get picked." I know that is not at all the correct response. Part of me wonders if it's just a defense mechanism for me-I'm still checking my heart on all of that. I see how it leads me to not think correctly about God. Instead of trusting Him and being surrendered to Him I am questioning Him. My prayer the last two days is that God will allow me to think correctly about Him. I so want my heart and my mind to be set on Him and to be correct. Can you pray that for me as well? If anyone has any verses or thoughts on that I would love to hear-text me, message me on Facebook, leave a comment on here, etc. I need all the help I can get to believe truth! 

We recognize and see that God is being good to us in all of this, but it is also a struggle. We are thankful for all we are learning but also need lots of prayer as we go along on this beautiful journey!

Inconsistent

I want to apologize for my inconsistency in posting updates on here. Who knew living without internet would effect so many things in my life?? My plan was to update it today with a long post, but that's not going to happen. I will post soon though! For now, just continue praying for us!!

Hard Week

This week has been hard for me in a lot of different ways. I think it is starting to hit me that we really aren't moving back to West Lafayette. Don't get me wrong, I really like Columbus and I am sure I will grow to love it just like I did West Lafayette. I think it's just hitting me that we are starting over. We will have to find a church, make new friends, find a house and all the other things that go along with moving. God has been so gracious to us though to give us friends here who we were friends with in Lafayette. They have made our transition so much easier and it also helps that Heath's parents are here. Both of those things make us not feel so alone in this new city for us.

I think another reason it has been hard is that I feel like I have had a bad view of God. I want to say from the beginning that I know this isn't a correct view and that He really is doing so much, but this is how I have felt the last few weeks: I feel like God is just saying "no" to everything. We have begged Him for a long time to allow us to get pregnant and the answer for now is no. We have asked Him to allow us to get picked by birth mothers who we have presented to and His answer so far is no. We begged Him to allow us to stay in West Lafayette and the answer was no. We have been asking Him to sell our house and the answer so far has been no. Now I know God is doing a lot more than I can see (check out my post a few weeks ago), but it just seems like all the tangible things He is saying "no" to. I confess I have a tendency to get a bit cynical so this has not been good for me. I start questioning God and His character. I feel like the two big things we are trusting Him for is a baby and our house to sell and it's just hard for me that He is not allowing either. I think mostly it's hard because I want to control both of those things and I can't.

 The other day Heath and I were talking about God and His timing and I just admitted that I don't like God's timing. I want a baby like yesterday and I want our house to sell today. I know I will look back and see God's perfect timing in all of this in the years to come, but right now I don't really like the waiting. I do know that God is doing so much in our hearts during this time and even though right now I think I would like the tangible things more, I know in years to come I will feel beyond grateful for all He has done in our hearts during this part of our beautiful journey.

Prayer Requests

We wanted to share some specific things you can be praying for us:

1. We would trust God's timing in every aspect of our lives.
2. We would transition well to Columbus and find a church we can plug in to.
3. There would be birth mothers that meet our criteria that we can have a profile presented to.
4. Our house in West Lafayette would sell.

I know this is a short post and the posts have been sporadic lately, but we don't have consistent internet right now. Thank you for following our blog!!

Columbus here we come!

Let me start off by saying we L-O-V-E living in West Lafayette. Actually, I don't know the word love does it justice. God has been so sweet to us there. We love our friends, love our church and love our neighbors. All that to say, moving to Columbus was not on our agenda, but it was clearly on God's.

I will start from the beginning. Over Thanksgiving break Heath's dad (his parents live in Columbus) approached us about the idea of moving to Columbus to work with Mariah Foods. His dad is the VP of Sales and they were wanting to get some younger people in there. Heath said we would think about it. My initial reaction: thanks but no thanks. I was not interested in moving. I loved everything about where we were and felt like we were finally settled. Heath was interested in the job and as far as getting experience and training it was by far the best opportunity he could ever hope for. We knew we had some time because we couldn't sell our house until the end of May because of some tax reasons.

About the same time, Heath started wondering if his current job was something he really wanted to do long term. As the weeks went by it became more and more apparent that it wasn't the right fit for him. We are so thankful he had that job and can see how God used it and are beyond thankful that he even had a job, we just knew it was time for a change. God started to do some really interesting things. All of a sudden all these jobs started popping up-he wasn't actively looking, they just kept coming up, people were asking him to interview. We were thrilled and just prayed God would open up the right door and close all the other ones. We pretty much told his dad we weren't interested in the job in Columbus and would probably take one of the ones in Lafayette because that's where we wanted to stay.

Wouldn't you know that not only did God not open the doors for any of the jobs in Lafayette, he slammed the doors shut and continued to open the doors for Columbus. My reaction: thanks but no thanks. I seriously was not at all interested in moving there-other than the fact that it put us closer (okay so we're living in their houses close) to his parents and it would put me 2 hours closer to my family (which would make a weekend trip doable-yay!)

Heath continued to interview with different companies in Lafayette and God just kept shutting the doors. So in the beginning of April we realized that it wasn't good for him to be at his job for much longer (lots of stress, long hours, he didn't love it) and we needed to make a move. I kept telling Heath he needed to actively be searching for something and his response was something to the effect of "why would I look for the exact same job I've been offered in Columbus-which is what I want to be doing-knowing that I will never be able to find it because I really don't have the experience." Well said, Heath, well said.

 And that was all it took for me to get on board. I didn't want to move to Columbus and I still like to think it's not real-kind of like we are just taking a little break and we will be back to life as we knew it in no time. But here's the thing, Heath provides for me in a way that allows me to be home (which I am especially looking forward to when Baby Racine joins us-hopefully sometime soon), so I want him to love what he's doing. It is a small sacrifice to me to uproot my life so that he can love his job. I'm in no way saying that it's easy for me to uproot my life and there have already been and will continue to be challenges that come along with it, but it is a way I can serve him. And you know what? He loves his job. He is like a whole new person.

So here we are in Columbus, IN, living back and forth between his mom's and his dad's and trying to figure out what the Lord has for us here. It was so clearly Him moving us here. I have all kinds of questions-where will we go to church, will I have friends like I did in West Lafayette, in what ways can I minister to people, how long before our house sells and we can buy a new one, where is the ______(fill in the blank because I don't know where anything is!!) and so on and so on. But when we moved to West Lafayette I had many of the same questions and I didn't really want to live there, but God did it. He gave me some of my best friends,  He gave us an unbelievable church and you know what? He'll do it again.

The past two years have been full of unexpected faith steps, but we will keep taking them all along this beautiful journey!