Ed's best friend is Chris Osthaus. They have been best friends since childhood. Chris is also the one that led Ed to Christ. Chris is a great blessing to us! He sent a blog to us the other day and it has blessed me so much. I don't know these folks that write the blog he sent... Chris grew up with the husband, Nate. The below excerpt is what I read today. It spoke to me a beautiful way.
Here is the blog address: http://everybitterthingissweet.wordpress.com/
"What if we had conceived a biological child just before beginning this adoption process? What if we had chosen the route of fertility treatments — instead of adoption (a tough decision that took months to wade through)? What if we had zipped through the process, as planned, and had received a referral for different children?
I’m living at the intersection of the divine and the ordinary. I’m cleaning up spills, doing countless loads of laundry and kissing ouchies … of children who–six months ago–had a bleak existence.
The secular world wants to look at me and Nate and say “wow, you did GOOD. what a marvelous thing you’ve done for these children.” And they do. I hear it almost weekly. And I cringe.
I have yet to come up with a brief response that illustrates the gravity of God’s work. We did NOTHING, but cry out to God out of our own (possibly selfish?) longing for a family, and for more of Him, and for His Spirit’s leading in our lives. And He cracked open His divinity and gave us a taste. And just this little sip is about enough to knock me over. Every day. When she says “mommy, stay here?” more times than I can count or he gives an unsolicited sloppy kiss followed by “I love you Mommy” I sometimes can’t breathe.
God, you let us play a part in saving them. You would have done it anyways — in one way or another. But you married our prayers–frayed around the edges–with their need.
Many have said adoption is addicting. And now I know why. I tell Nate that, at the moment, I am a dangerous woman. Because any hint I’ve had of a child in need, an orphan, tends to linger in my mind." Sara and Nate
