About a week ago we were all talking about how hard it is to play this waiting game. It's one of the hardest things we've ever had to do...just sit here waiting for a call from Ghana so we can jump on a plane and fly over to meet our two new little rugrats. We (well, really I) confided my frustration with our Yahoo support group by posting the following:
"So, our good friend Melina hand delivered our dossier to Ghana on March 21st...that's 42 days for those who don't have a calendar - and still no call for the court date. Brandie and I have been trying to figure out for the last couple of weeks if we'd rather rub rock salt under our eyelids, jab and icepick into my bellybutton, or cannon ball off a 20' diving board into a pool of broken glass instead of this waiting game! This is NOT fun!
Other families waiting for court dates - what are you doing to occupy your minds while you wait? Please don't tell me yoga or meditation...I'm much too shallow for those things! :-)
Anyway, the message board has been quiet for the last few days so I figured I'd liven it up a little bit. This waiting thing SUCKS!!
Lots of love,
Jason"
Several of our friends on the message board replied with things like - super clean the house, do garage sales, clean out closets, home repairs, etc. Anything to keep you busy and your mind at work. We'd already done the yard sale, Brandie does a good job of keeping the house cleaned, and I really have no interest in creating a list of 'things' to do just so I can work more. So what to do?
We've prayed as a family to ask Father to grant us the patients to see this adoption on His time and not our time. I know we'd be comforted if we were able to do so. We also asked Him to help us focus on the more important things rather than just the wait. I think that was our problem...
On Thursday I was out of cell phone range and Brandie's phone had died while she was at school helping with Gage's pre-school class. After my business meetings I was on my way back into town when my cell phone lit up like a Christmas tree - 8 new voice mails from our home number? Uh oh...that's never a good thing. My first reaction was that someone was hurt or had been in an accident. I called home quickly. Brandie told me we'd had a fire in the garage which was started by a heating lamp that the kids had messed with and it had fallen into some wood.
Brody had gotten home from school at 2:30 and done what he does every day after school. Put his bag down on the porch and grab the basketball. He was shooting hoops when he said he 'felt like he needed to go into the house'. (I asked him later why he thinks he felt that way at that moment. He said, "I don't know". It was a great teaching moment to let him know that the feeling he had was the Holy Spirit talking to him. I told him how grateful I was for him that he was worthy to receive promptings and that he was obedient enough to follow the prompting). When he got into the house he immediately smelled smoke and when he walked into the kitchen could see smoke coming from the garage. That's when he frantically called his mom's phone and my phone - but no one answered.
He grabbed the dog - fearful the house would burst into flames - and ran over to Gage's pre-school to get Brandie. When Brandie got home she immediately opened the garage doors to find the whole garage FILLED with stinky black smoke. She ran over to the heating lamp, unplugged it from the wall, and quickly extinguished the fire. We were VERY lucky the wood had smoldered a long time, creating all that oxygen killing smoke - otherwise the little fire would have been a big fire and taken our house with it.
The damage had been done. The house had been filled with the smoke, everything in the garage (including my boat and 1969 Firebird) were now a hazy grey color and smelled like we just tried to make jerky out of them. When I arrived home three of Brandie's close friends and Brandie were tearing the house apart - putting all of the bedding, clothing, rugs, etc. into bags and totes for washing. The disaster cleanup people were there within the hour from Brandie calling our insurance agent. They began the restoration of taking our 'camp site' back to smelling like a home. They started wiping down the walls, door jams, moldings, counter tops, and anything where the dust or smoke could settle. They told us we had to stay out of the house that night because they were going to bomb the house with ozone and hepafilters. They would then clean the carpets, clean out all of the duct work and then we'd see how things went from there.
So, here we are - Sunday night. The walls, moldings, door jams, plant shelves, and carpets have all been cleaned. We spent a few hours yesterday in the laundromat doing 8 jumbo loads of laundry. We've had bombs go off in our house and garage. Large fans blowing air around in both the garage and house all the while a huge hepafilter runs in our living room. The smoke smell in the house is drastically better (but not gone according to Brandie) but the garage still smells like a case of s'mores gone wrong. I'm pretty sure we'll have to paint all the walls and ceiling to get it to smell better.
The moral of the story - be careful what you wish for - because what you had in mind as an answer may not be the exact same as what will happen. The Master is definitely the controller of the universe and he DEFINITELY has a sense of humor. I was shown that again this weekend. No one was hurt, our house still stands, we have a lovely camping scent throughout, and I'll probably get a new paint job in the garage out of it...but at least for a few days - I wasn't thinking about being in Ghana!
Oh WOW! Praise God nobody was harmed. So sorry to hear about the fire.
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