Hope Produces Perseverance

"And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us." Romans 5:2-5 Adoption is not a sprint, it is definately a marathon and in the last few days it definately feels like we hit the wall. Along with the joy of potential travel dates came an email that basically says that people in Russia feels like E would require too much care, that trying to adopt her may hurt our chances to get S and that we should basically give it up and move on. This was extremely hard to hear. In our hearts E is our daughter and I could not picture going over there and knowing that she was being left in an orphanage. This is where hope becomes so important. We will try as hard as we can to bring her home with us this time. We will persevere. But if it doesn't come to pass we will not give up. In two years when we can adopt again we will try again to go back and get her. I cannot imagine doing this all over again, or how long that two years will be but in this case hope will produce perseverance not the other way around. And we still have hope in the knowledge that God is sovereign over every single bit of this process. If he wants E to come home with us she will. And if we have to wait two years for that day than that is God's plan too. God did not leave us and so we cannot leave her. We hope. We pray. And we trust that God is bigger than all of this.