court and cuteness

i haven't shared much about the potential additional delays that we're now facing with our march 11 court date - mainly because up until this weekend of some heavy and honest prayer, i've been really discouraged about the whole thing.  but thankfully the lord is faithful even when i'm not, and by god's grace, i'm in a place of contentment and peace now.

but we still need your prayers!!  we got word this week of two snags that could drastically slow our timeline from this point on: 1) the agency that's responsible for submitting an approval letter for us in country announced that they're dropping their daily case load from 30 letters per day to 5 per day.  if you do the math, that points to no approval letter in time for our new march 11 court date (this is the agency that caused us to not pass because they unexpectedly closed the week of our first court date).  2) if the government shutdown takes place this week, the adoption-related officials at the US embassy in ethiopia will leave on furlough, so even if we were to pass court, there wouldn't be anybody in place to push us through the last leg of the process.

but take heart!!  we received an email from our case worker this afternoon that our attorney in addis is trying to get our case moved up from the 11th so that we can hopefully avoid this series of potentially loooong delays.  if you'll recall from this post, we've been praying daily that the lord would sovereignly and miraculously move us through court earlier than march 11th.  please, please pray with us specifically toward this end.

for the first time in a while, i can truthfully say that i'm at peace with whichever direction this goes.  it's not that i want micah home any less than i always have (no, in fact, after the past couple of days of getting the nursery painted and set up for our baby boy, i'm more excited than ever!), but as i wrote to some friends this weekend, i don't understand why this journey has been so long and sometimes heart-wrenching...

but the lord does. 

he has sovereignly ordained every step, and while i haven't always liked it, i find myself more in awe of the lord and walking more intimately with him now than i have ever before in my 20+ years as a believer.  i think that's greatly worth anything i could ever walk through.

with the heavy stuff out of the way, let me share a pic of izzy from her first night in the big girl bed.  jury's still out on whether she was excited or not...