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God's Surprising Grace

“His compassions fail not. They are new every morning.” (Lam 3:22-23)

God’s grace is constant and steady. Every day holds a lot of common and ordinary graces that everyone shares: breath, life, food, clothes, sleep, work, and laughter. And then some days God offers us a large dose and it reminds us of how surprising all his gifts are. We don’t own any of our days or any of our breathes. They are all gifts and they all come unbidden. God is superabundant and he just gives.

Kate and I have been waiting and praying for our adoption for over three years. It was a long wait. Life was busy and God was very kind to us, providing us with friends to pray for us and also giving us the funds for the adoption itself. We were very thankful for those things. Very regularly we would have people ask about our adoption and tell us they were praying for us. Those quick conversations were encouraging little reminders from God.


It was a whirlwind when God matched us with Pilgrim. We found out about the baby on January 31. We talked through the details of a NICU baby. It sounded hard but we decided that we could handle that kind of story. We said yes to showing our profile book on February 1. Then we prayed for the little guy since he was in the NICU.

On February 2, our agency emailed to ask us for a detailed NICU plan. We responded with a page outlining how we would have Kate stay near the hospital and I (Jesse) would stay at home with our daughter to help her get to school and so I could teach my own online classes.

Later on that same day, our case worker called us on the phone. The call came in on Kate’s phone. When she saw who was calling, she walked into my study and handed me the phone to have me answer it. I was in the middle of an email to a student but I knew it was important. So I took the phone and answered it.

I wasn’t sure what the agency was calling about. My first thought was that they would have some more questions for us to go through or the birth mother wanted to set up an interview with us. Kate later told me that when she saw it was the agency calling us, she knew we were matched. I guess I was a little slow on things.

I answered the phone and our case worker asked if Kate could join us on the phone. I got Kate and turned on the speaker phone.

Our case worker said, “I wanted to let you all know that you have been matched with the baby boy. Congratulations!”

And just like that, we went from planning regular life with school and work to packing up for a trip. We hadn’t planned on it being this way but God was calling us to the next step. We dropped everything and went. It happened in one day: a new grace just landed in our hands.

We talked through details with our caseworker and planned to go to the hospital (about 6 hours away) on Friday Feb 4. We would have one day to pack up and get ready to go.

We had lots of details to figure out: baby names, place to stay, school plans, gas for the car, check the tires, several different emails to write: family, work, school, church, etc. We weren’t sure of all the details yet so we had to pack with some contingencies in mind: Would Kate stay longer or would she come home and then go back down to the hospital?

We were excited and thankful for God’s surprising grace. We were busy and it was a wild ride but we knew he had it planned out. We got packed and jumped on the ride God had sent us.

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