Encounters with God

After getting back from Minnesota and having the Ethiopia encounters with God and sharing all of this with Will, we began praying fervently for God to show us - show us which road to take for this adoption. Do we go Domestic or do we go International? Speak to us oh, God. Speak so that we can hear you so we know it's you and make it abundantly clear to us what your plan is.

I feel God showed up in those three people I met as I traveled home from the Summit - if my travel plans would have gone on as I had planned, I would not have encountered God the way I did - I would have been on the hotel shuttle to the airport, not sitting in the lobby waiting for a cab and grumbling to myself about the $35 I now had to pay to get to the airport.  And what's the chance that the cab driver was a 66 year old man from Ethiopia...who picks me up at 7:30am when his 12 hour shift ends at 7am. Tell me that wasn't an encounter with God that He had planned for me.

I got to encounter God again on the airplane...if I hadn't been standing where I was in the Jetway, behind the young girl and her grandmother and heard them talking about their seats, I would not have looked at my ticket and see that my seat is in the same row as her grandmother and openly offer to change seats. Had I not changed seats I would have missed God's encounter with me through the Africa emblem on the man's shirt.

Had the Delta agent been standing at the podium in Atlanta, had the crew decided to wait for the 15 or people to arrive from the hundreds of delayed flights, I would have missed God's third meeting with me. The young mother and her adopted son from Ethiopia are forever in my mind. I can still see their faces - and I recall the conversation I had with them and if I saw them on the street, I would immediately know them. Maybe God is using that meeting and for a future reason...I don't know. But though my trip didn't go as I had planned, it went exactly how God had planned and for that I am humbled and thankful. I am sorry for everyone who missed their connection too so that God could meet with me a third time - maybe He used that time to meet with those people too in a way He intended.

My prayers were being answered and God was speaking through all those strangers...but they weren't strangers - it was God. He spoke when it was His timing, not mine - when I was quiet and listening to Him, when He knew I was ready to receive what He had for me and us.

We needed to now talk more about this as a couple and be on the same page, united in where we feel God is leading us. Will looks at me and says are you sure about this? I said, pray about it...see what God tells you.  My prayer for Will is for God to show up and show him the plan in a way that he understands and recognizes.

There are no chance meetings or coincidences...divine appointments with a Sovereign God is what it is...and you KNOW what it is when it happens.