blessings

I am choosing to focus on the blessing that son Caleb is leaving Iraq in just a few days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am choosing to focus on the blessing that son Joshua, going back to Iraq AGAIN on December 20, is going only for a short stint and not for even 6 months or a year. I am choosing to focus on the fact that while our little son Daniel is still in Liberia and will be until next year some time, God is sustaining him when other healthier children around him succumbed to illnesses we prayed that he be able to resist. I am thankful that he does not know that family is waiting for him and trying with all their prayers to get him home. We thought this Christmas would be very different than how it has shaped up to be.....we were pretty sure early on that Junior and Diamoh would not be here....not much hope for that this year or next, pretty sure that they will forever be the children of our hearts but not our home, but we had a lot of hope that Daniel would be home, have had some surgery and that we'd have some idea of what his life might be like. These were obviously NOT God's plans in God's time. Hard as it is to be thankful that our little Daniel still lies in his orphanage bed with his hydrocephaly totally untreated, I need to choose that response to my Lord Who has ordered all our steps for us. Hard as it is in my mamma-heart flesh to be thankful that Junior and Diamoh and the many other children of Liberia are still stuck in orphanages and not in families , I am choosing to be thankful that God knows the whole bigger picture................He knows if we need to be more faithful in praying for or giving to those situations, He knows which situations need more time, even which situations were "mistakes" needing His intervention, He KNOWS WHAT IS BEST.
How I praise Him that HE is omnipotent and omnicient, and that His mercies are NEW every morning! His compassions: they fail NOT . He knew that my dear friend Jill's daughter in Ethiopia needed her case heard in court yesterday, needs to come home to her forever family probably in January, after a relatively short process, and that is GOOD. Through tears of joy for Jill and some tears of sadness for myself and my children, will sing. I will sing "My heart will choose to say ' Lord BLESSED BE YOUR NAME!' " "Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me"