When the Storm is God's Will

(Welcome to Day 12 our Our Adoption Adventure!  If you missed any of the previous days click here to read them.)  

      

         After two adoptions fell through, we were not eager to jump back in the the emotional pool. We believed God wanted us to adopt two more children, we just didn’t know how He was going to do it. We could not see the plan, but that did not mean He wasn’t bringing it about. God can use anything, especially our weaknesses and our difficulties to bring about His plan. It always amazes me when He works that way.

         We owned a business that struggled financially and in other ways. We bought the business out of bankruptcy thinking we could build it back to a thriving business.  The small community did not like the change in ownership. Even though we did not advertise it, some people did not want to do business with us because of our conservative Christian beliefs. Sales dropped immediately.

         Within the first year, the long time salesman for the company was kidnapped from a bar. He was missing for two weeks, and then found murdered in another state. To say this rocked our business is an understatement. People in the community brought flowers and cards and set them in front of our store as a memorial.  The news media stopped in regularly trying to get an interview and a statement with every new development in the investigation. And the strangest of all, we received phone calls from the large community of Sikh’s claiming to have a vision of what happened to our employee, and wanted us to follow up with their predictions.  This was a sad, bizarre and chaotic time for our business.

         Among other events, a drunk driver killed another employee as he drove into work. Our manager had to tell his family what happened. We found another employee sleeping in our shop at night, because he lost his home. All of these situations and the business in general brought us a tremendous amount of stress.

         We questioned God and ourselves as to why we ever bought this business. Initially, we felt led to buy this business, and yet it brought nothing but hardship and stress the entire time we owned it. Owning this business seemed out of place for us. The business was not in the town where we lived. It was not doing well. We were not a good fit for this community. It was a battle we felt we were definitely losing. Why would God want us to be a part of something that was so stressful?

         It reminded me of when the disciples were in a boat with Jesus on the Sea of Galilee. They were exactly where Jesus told them to be, yet a giant storm blew in and tossed the boat violently and the disciples panicked. This example shows us that sometimes we can be in the middle of a storm and still be right in the middle of God’s will.

         Then, one day, in what seemed to be completely out of the blue, one of the employees came to us. She said her husband had a distant cousin, whose daughter was pregnant with twins and she wanted to place them for adoption.

                         She asked if we were interested in adopting twins.

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Have you ever been in the middle of a storm, but knew that was exactly where you were supposed to be?