Continued Blessings

Today has truly been an awesome day! I am so excited that my brother and sister-in-law have met their funds to bring home their new baby boy!

But first, if  you don't know their story, let me share a little of their backstory:

The past few years have been tough for them. Two and a half years ago, they were excitedly preparing for the arrival of their first baby. At the 20 week appointment, they found out she was a girl and were thrilled with the news.

A week later, their world came crashing down when they got a call from the doctor who had been looking over their ultrasounds. He wasn't sure what was the matter, but the baby appeared to have a genetic disorder, maybe Down syndrome, a heart defect, or perhaps a brain abnormality. 

The next several months were a series of tests and doctors visits. Each one left them a little more discouraged that the last. Ellie was born full term, but only lived for 20 minutes.

Watching my brother carry a tiny casket to bury his daughter was devastating. No words can be said to comfort grieving parents who have to go home to an empty house with small reminders of the baby they would never get to hold.

The doctors told them that it was a fluke. A unnamed, unheard of genetic disorder. If they wanted to have kids in the future, they would have no problems.

A year and a half later, they were again excited to find out that they would be bringing another baby girl into the world. They were nervous as they went in for their 20 week appointment, but the doctors told them everything would be ok, so they had nothing to fear. At least that's what they kept telling themselves, but very quickly, they found out that something was wrong. In fact, their second child had the same unheard of genetic disorder. 

With heart wrenching pain, Jordan carried Elsie another 20 weeks. She went into labor late Christmas night and two days later delivered Elsie. 

_____________________________________________

The past five months have been spent diving into the world of adoption. From the home studies, loads of paperwork and building a portfolio to present to birth mothers its been busy. Then the waiting and anticipation of being presented and not chosen time after time.

Finally, last week Jordan and Chris got matched with a child. "I really have a good feeling about this one." She told me last week, but then had to wait all day long to find out whether the birth mom would choose them. Finally, around 8:00pm they had their answer - "She wants you to be the parents!"

I wish I could say that they journey ends happily there, but there are still so many tiny details that add up. At that point(last week) Chris and Jordan had been doing crowd fund raising, and had only reach around $16,000 of their $25,000 goal. Yesterday, they were both overwhelmed with the last minute paperwork, finger printing and documents that had to be overnighted. On top of everything, they found out that they were going to need around $5000 more than they originally thought.

What had seemed like an impossibility yesterday, became a reality today. I kept watching and refreshing my computer screen all day. It truly was a miracle to see all of the funds steadily come in today. They have surpassed their goal, and will be able to bring home their son this weekend!

I want to thank everyone who has been a part of this incredible journey. I cannot wait to be a part of this little boys life and share the stories with him someday. God is SO good!

Follow Jordan's blog here: http://tatesatsea.blogspot.com/

Detours

Roadblocks are inevitable.

The World often sees a small straight line to get from point A to point B, but God plans most often include a crazy, round about way of getting to the destination. Others may even find it crazy and wonder why we don't take the shorter route.

The longer route most likely will be filled with turns. We might get lost and most definitely will be late to our destination.

The other day I was following my GPS. It lead me down a road that had a large sign that read

ROAD CLOSED

There were no detour signs. No indication of which way to go, I only knew that I couldn't go forward. The path that my roadmap indicated, the one that I wanted to take had ended.

I knew that going forward would be the quickest way to my destination, but had I gone that way, it would have lead me to destruction.

I had to turn off from the way that was indicated. My GPS kept telling me to turn around. Make a U-Turn and Go Back!

The road I was supposed to take had looked fine, at least for a while it did. But what I couldn't see clearly at first glance was the missing bridge. From every appearance the road looked great except that it was abruptly lacking a necessary section.

We can't always see that the bridge is out and often fight against going the longer route. Growth in our lives doesn't come in the persistence of going the shorter route.

In our lives, often we're told to "Just keep pushing forward." "Don't give up, if you work hard enough you can reach you're goal." But this isn't right. Continuing to drive when the road is clearly close, would be detrimental.

When we try to continue along the shorter path, we miss what God really has for use. It may be a more scenic route, and to be sure, there will be steep hills, potholes and windy roads. We may even hit dead and and have to turn around(which happened to me several times while trying to navigate my way back to the road I wanted to get to).

It's the roadblocks and windy roads that build our character. Through them we must trust Him in following a new path. Maybe not the one marked  out on the map, but He will take us to the right destination.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. 

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross,scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Hebrews 12:1-2

Prayers for Fiji

When most people consider Fiji they think of it as being a resort destination, but did you know that it is actually a third world country? That means that the majority of the population lives in poverty according to American standards of living.

In just 7 weeks from now, I will be heading off for this country to become part of a team of interns with Evangelism Explosion. While there, I will learn how to reach people of different cultures and ages for Christ while building relationships with the locals. In addition, I'll have the chance to visit local villages and do service projects.

Here's a bit of my journey towards praying about going to Fiji...

In the past few months, there have been a couple of prophetic prayers from my church that have been directed for me.

The first one was "for a girl with long hair who recently lost a piece of jewelry. God wants her to place her trust in Him." with the reference to Proverbs 3:5-6

"Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths."

The crazy part was, I had just lost a favorite earring the day before and couldn't stop thinking about it.

Several weeks later, there was another prophetic word directed to me, it said,

"For someone who knows they are facing a huge change in their lives this summer and feels burdened because of it. The Lord invites you to come to Him and is saying I am always there for you. Find rest in my steadfast love for you."

I felt my heart tugged when I heard those words, because I knew they were for me. I had been praying for several weeks about my summer plans, but felt the constant financial burden wearing me down. 

It was through prayer and words of confirmation from friends and family that I realized God was calling me to go to Fiji for the summer. As I was praying about God's leading, it seemed as if everyone and his sister decided to start drinking Fiji water en mas. I kept seeing "Fiji" everywhere. I even found a bottle mysteriously  in the backseat of my car! (Was that a sign or what?)

So it is with excitement that I prepare for this next adventure that the Lord has for me. 

If I have learned anything in the past week from my eye injury, it is this: God works through prayer.

I want to thank each and every person who prayed for healing for me. As I write, my eye is almost completely healed, but I will find out for sure on Tuesday. In two days, the tear in my cornea went from being 8mm to 3mm and I know it's even better than that now.

So, as I look towards heading out of the country, out of my comfort zone and to a new nation and people group, I want to ask for prayer.

1. Pray that God would work in me to teach and grow me in new ways.
2. Pray that he would use me as his witness to the people I come in contact with.
3. For the team of people that I will be living and working with.
4. Pray that I would be able to get the financial means necessary for this trip(and be able to relinquish my control to God's plan for me)

I need a strong group of supporters and prayer warriors backing me up in order for this trip to be a success. So in advance, I thank all of you.

Questions or comments, feel free to leave a line or send an email! I'd love to hear from you!

Blessings,

Liz

From Blinded Eyes I See

The definition of  trust is the dependence on someone or something.

I thought I knew what it was, but I'm realizing I'm just at the beginning of this trust activity called life. Dependence means that you must rely on that other person. The ball is no longer in your court. You don't call the shots, but must completely depend upon that other person.

Having trust in the Lord requires so much more than saying, "Lord, I believe." It is possible to believe in someone and not really trust them. I believe that God has a plan for my life. From every mental capacity of my brain, I believe that God has my best interests at heart and He will provide for me.

The sad thing is, this belief of mine is often just head knowledge.

To fully rely on God, I not only need to believe him and what his word says about him, but I must begin to TRUST that he has a beautiful story he's writing about my life that is far better than my own.

I thought I could see, but sometimes it takes not being able to see, to begin to understand.

So friends, God is teaching me to trust him when I can't see the way. In fact, it has taken an temporary physical blindness of sorts for God to really show this to me. I haven't been able to see much for the past few days, so I've had a lot of time to think while I've been lying in bed.

I previously said, "Ok, Lord, I know you're leading me in this direction, so these are the plans I've made to reach that goal. I've saved a bit here, and budgeted there, and everything should work out just fine! I've got this under control."

Nowhere in my agenda did I leave room for handing the plans over to God for him to take control. It's taken time, but I'm learning to place my trust in His omnipotent will, instead of my weakly laid out plans.

This means there may be a whole lot of detours in the road map I made for my life. No doubt there will be plenty more bumps along the way, but I am just as certain that joy will come from those tough times.

How do I have this confidence? His word is a daily reminder that He's drawing the roadmap for my life, if only I let go and trust him.

"Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understandings, in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths."

Proverbs 3:5,6

500 peppercorns

This is a post for those who may look at this blog and mistakenly come to the conclusion that Liz Tate has a pretty awesome life.

Granted, I have gotten to do some pretty amazing things in the past couple of years, but they're mixed with their hardships. For now, I'm sitting smack dab in the middle of one.

As I write, I'm currently sitting at my kitchen table eating my lunch. My lunch was supposed to be a burrito bowl of chicken and black beans over quinoa, but has turned into something I like to call "500 pepper crunch burrito bowl."

Let me back up a bit....

Last Thursday, during my last half hour of working, the baby I watch just so happened to reach back and poke my eye while I was holding her.

I am not the kind of person who will go to the doctors if I can help it, so I tried to forget about it, hoping the pain would be gone when I woke up the following day. Unfortunately, it was worse, so my sister-in-law sent over some eye drops that were left over from her lasik surgery.

My parents were in town for the weekend, and trying to be helpful, my dad offered to put the drops in my eye... only he grabbed a bottle that wasn't eye drops.

On top of the scratches to my cornea, I also got a lovely dose of Maximum strength Grapefruit Seed Extract, which is basically a very concentrated form of pure acid.

So much for Liz not wanting to see a doctor. In the past 5 days I have seen 2 different specialists on 3 different occasions, and have 2 more appointments lined up for the rest of the week.

According to my charts, I have an 8 mm lesion with chemical burns. I'm currently blind in the one eye and so far, there has been very little healing. Just a little bit healing to say the least.

A few weeks ago, I prayed about it, and felt God calling me to go on a mission trip this summer. After carefully planning out how I would pay for the trip (and bills back home as I am away for 2 months), I agreed to go on the trip. As soon as I said yes, my car broke down which cost a whopping $550.  It was a minor setback, but I know that God has plans, so I continued planning for the trip. Next, I got the news that my job would be ending 5 weeks earlier than I thought. That got me down for a couple of days, but I thought, "I'll find something, it'll all work out." As soon as I had peace about the finances again, then everything happened with my eye. Not only am I paying to eye specialists and the medication, but it also has meant that I can't work.

I've been trying not to pity myself, as I stumble blindly around the kitchen attempting to make my lunch. just as I was adding some fresh ground pepper to eat my burrito bowl, the cap broke and EVERY-SINGLE-PEPPERCORN ended up in my bowl. My eyesight's so fuzzy that I couldn't tell a peppercorn from a black bean. So after scraping off the top layer, I've resigned to my crunchy, spicy, lunch.

I hope I can someday sit back and laugh at it all and point to the ways that God was using these things to grow me, but in the moment, nothing's funny.

I want to be able to see His hand in my life. To not become defeated with I am faced with hard times, but to be honest, it's difficult.

Maybe I'm so focused on wanting to see how God's working in my life right now, that I've forgotten that he asks me to trust him. And for that, I have to follow him blindly.

Perspective Changes Everything

I walked down the beach to watch the sunset this evening. I needed the time to unwind from a day of work, but also wanted to get away to seek God about some upcoming opportunities in my life.

God used this time of undivided attention to whisper his thoughts to me. I came to God seeking answers and instead was given the impulse to get down close to the ground to look at a piece of sea weed.

 From my vantage point above, it looked like a bunch of barren sticks sitting in the water.  As I knelt down to really look at it closely, these sticks came to life with each individual branch gleaming from the setting sun. I was amazed to see how the perspective changed the way I saw those sea branches.

It was as if someone whispered in my ear, "perspective changes everything." So I asked God, "what perspective should I be looking at these decisions I have to make? His answer was simply, "Mine."

I've been looking at things from one angle. It was a narrow point of view, and one that did not include beauty in it. I can become blinded to everything and just see things straight up the way they are, at least from my one perspective. I've been looking at the opportunities that have been unfolding for this summer, and instead of seeing God's hand at work, I've been asking myself, how will I provide? 

Of course the answer for my question was also being answered by God in the very moment, when a flock of seagulls landed in the surf.

Look at the birds. They don't plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren't you far more valuable to him than they are?

 - Matthew 6:26

How quick I am to forget His provision in my life!

I sat on a sand dune to watch the sun slowly sink down into the horizon. I said to myself, "wow, that sky is amazing!" As soon as I thought it, God spoke to me again, "The beauty is not coming from the sky itself, it's coming from the Sun. It's the Sun's reflection on the clouds that cause the sky to be so beautiful. The "messier" the sky the sky is with clouds, the prettier the sunset ends up being. 

 I broke down with the realization that I am a flawed person. All I have as an offering to Christ is my messy life, but he uses that very same mess and makes it into something good to reflect His glory, the glory of His SON!

God uses our failures, mess, and often the ugliness in our lives to bring His beauty into the world. He asks that we give all of ourselves, withholding nothing, and with that, he transforms us into something beautiful. 

When we can see only the mess, he whispers to us, "Perspective is everything. I want you to see your life through my eyes."

Self-Publishing School

I want to take a moment to share a big announcement in my life....(drum-roll please)

As of today I have officially begun the journey of writing and self-publishing my first book!

I'll be working with a network of around 70 other people from all over the world who are also in the midst of writing their own books. I can't wait to share this journey with you guys (more on the subject of the book later).