He is in the details....even when we don't think so

Next week I am taking our daughter on a road trip to the mountains of New Mexico and Colorado. It is just a special time for the two of us. She will be 13 in April and I am using this opportunity to really have some meaningful talks about modesty, purity, sex, friends, and general teenage girl things. My precious husband is giving us this wonderful opportunity to experience my most favorite place in all the world and share it with our daughter. We are going to have a wonderful 'passport to purity' week!

I am so looking forward to this uninterrupted time with H. She was only six months old when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Her mother was only given weeks to live but the Lord gave her 3 years. I would have loved to have known her mom and can't wait until one day we can meet in Heaven. At times I hurt so deeply that I am having the chance to see her children grow up and become such awesome, godly young men and a young lady. I never dreamed I could love three children so deeply that were not my very own. I mean I can see loving adopted children, children you have prayed for and chosen but you hear so many traumatic cases where there are hard feelings, or the children cannot stand their 'stepmother'. This has never been the case. We just bonded. Step is not even in our vocabularly. Even their mother's dearest friends noticed this when we met in Texas over five years ago. They said their dear friend had prayed for her husband's new wife and a mother for her precious babies. They met weekly to pray with her and for her. She specifically prayed for one to love her children as if they were her very own but also that she would not let them forget her. Imagine meeting all these people that had known and loved my new husband's wife so deeply and they were asking all these important questions about where I stood with Christ, how I felt about my husband and children, etc. I just began to tell them that I can't explain it but I feel as if the children were my very own and that we often speak of their mother. Several women burst into tears in the room. I thought, "Oh no, I should not have said that!" When they regained their composure they told me that this was her hearts prayer. We all cried then. It is not in my own strength that this is being achieved. It is by the GRACE of our Lord that He has done this very thing. This circle of friends are unlike any I have ever had in my life. They surrounded my children's mother with love, prayer, friendship, companionship, and so many other things. Perhaps her closest friend of all is one of my dearest and most precious friends to date.

The Lord was in the details down to the very meeting of my husband and myself. It is truly an unbelievable story but one I will save for another time. Until then, I will continue to be in awe of how we have a Lord that loves us so incredibly that He takes each little circumstance of our lives and spins it into this beautiful tapestry called life. I don't want to miss out on what He has for me and my family. It is so easy to do. Tonight I feel grateful and yet so unworthy. He has taken the broken, shattered hearts of two families and made one. The story is only beginning...

Praising Him in ALL things,
Vickie