I am calling this post “Update #1” because I know that we are just beginning our journey, and that there will be many more updates in the future. If you haven’t read my original post about the journey God is taking us on, please read it HERE.
When I last posted, Matt and I had just met a man who ran a safe house in our area and we were in the process of having our background check done. Since then we have been approved to visit the safe house and start getting to know the girls. It has been absolutely incredible getting to meet them, meet the staff and start building relationships with all of them. It’s completely different then we thought it would be, but it’s amazing.
It has been a little challenging for us because we have never had a teenager, and now we are hanging out with 8 of them on a regular basis! But each time we’ve hung out with them God has given me and idea, a craft, a project, etc. It has been fun thinking outside of my normal “3 year old box” and doing teenager things. It’s definitely a process getting to know the girls because they are guarded but we are building relationships with them and we are getting to know each one of them, and God is speaking to us about them.
It has also been so incredible to see how God is changing our hearts and what He is speaking to us about His daughters, sex trafficking around the world and our future daughter. There have been so many days where I feel like my heart is going to explode because God is giving me so much love and so much vision for women and children all around the world that are enslaved in sex trafficking. It’s hard to have hope sometimes because the problem is SO BIG and it’s so awful but God is giving us hope and He is giving us glimpses of how He is going to use us. He is also expanding our hearts. He is giving my husband such a father’s heart and it’s incredible to see glimpses how God is using, and going to use, Matt to restore these girls, to give them a man to look up to, a man who loves them just the way they are. A man that wants and expects nothing from them, just loves them the way the Father does.
We are also excited about who we believe God is going to give us for our daughter. She is one of the girls from the safe house and she is amazing. She is our “Gabriella” which means: strength of God, God is my might and woman of God.
Among all the amazing things God is speaking, and the incredible ways He is moving, I’m also having lots of “die to self” moments. As you probably know from reading my blog, we live in a small home, just over 1,300 square feet, and we only have 3 bedrooms. My dream was to be in a bigger, home, with more bedrooms and more room for a family, by the time we brought home our daughter. But now God is giving us a daughter sooner than we expected and I’m racking my brain trying to figure out how our house is going to work for a family of four. Currently my office is our 3rd bedroom, which will soon need to be a room for our teenager. Dying to self… So now I’m thinking we could do an office addition, off our bedroom, but I know it’s money we will never get back out of the house. It’s so crazy because even as I write this, and as I’m thinking, “it’s so financially unwise to add on to a house when you know you will never get the money back” I can’t help but think I need to die to myself, to my ideas of what life and finances are supposed to look like because God is answering our prayers. What if we live in this small, not my dream house, house forever? Am I okay with that knowing that we are walking in God’s calling and rescuing girls that have suffered so much. Again I’m dying to self and to my house dreams. What if life isn’t about having the most beautiful home and people all over the world pinning pictures of my house? What if life, for us, is about living in a teeny tiny house and filling it with God’s peace, God’s love and then bringing in girls that are so broken, and seeing them healed. What if… This is so hard for me. I love our home but it’s not my dream home… not yet at least. Maybe it will become my dream home through time, as I see God filling it and changing lives in it. I’m choosing to die to myself.
