God Uses Email - Part 2

When we got the email from our friend about a baby needing an adoptive family, I called the attached phone number and was told that they already had a family. So I gave them my number "just in case something happens," and hung up. I didn't think much more about it, frankly, and I don't think I even called my hubby to tell him about it. Then about an hour later the woman called me back and said the family they had hoped to place the baby with had just backed out and we were the next and last people on her list. She wanted to know if we were seriously interested and she needed to know within the hour because social services would be called then and the child would be going into foster care.

This time I called my husband and we prayed. Then I called my pastor and we prayed. It's not ideal to have to make life-altering decisions under such time constraints, or over the phone for that matter. After a while my hubby sent me an email (I saved it too) which in part said

Honey,

I keep thinking about our James Study and Chapter 1 verse 27.

The KJV reads as follows...

"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, [and] to keep himself unspotted from the world."

This little girl is fatherless and she is in affliction. I really believe we should move forward.

We had been studying James in our home group and this scripture was the previous week's text. Don't misunderstand...we did NOT do this out of some obligation or arm-twisting. We really wanted another child, and we especially had been wanting a little girl. We had only begun praying several weeks before about the possibility of adopting again, and the suddenness of it all was what was causing any indecision on our part. Also, the unknown is scary, and it would be years before we knew how the alcohol affected her. So our study of James was confirmation to us of something we had already been asking the Lord about. We decided to go ahead and asked the Lord to slam the door if this is not what He wanted for this precious child or for our family.

He never closed the door, and I'm so grateful to have this little fireball in our home. Though the unknown is now becoming known (and it is hard at times to deal with), it is impossible for me to think of our family without Abigail. She is a ray of sunshine among the rest of the melancholy personalities that make up our family. It's funny, she needed an adoptive family, but I think we needed her even more!