So We Called

Doesn't it feel good when things start to slow down? When you feel like you are starting to get your footing and that maybe just maybe you can relax soon? Well, Reed and I are getting there. We are in our new home - amazed at the way God provided us with this dream of a place to call our own.
We are breathing again.

As we get comfortable in our new home, new jobs, new church - NEW LIFE,  God reminded us that we are not called to be comfortable.

Friday we received an email from our adoption agency stating that there were two little girls, 2 1/2 and 1, that needed to be matched immediately due to medical needs.
I about had a heart attack. I wanted to get sick, cry and jump up and down all at one time.
I couldn't believe that we got this email, I mean we aren't event done with all of the paperwork!
I called Reed in a panicked frenzy unable to make any rational decision at that point.
We discussed if we felt like we could event ask for more information. What if we asked to move forward to learn more about these precious babies and then got scared, if there needs were something we couldn't meet. Would we have the wisdom to know that and to make the right decision for us and them?? Of course Reed reminded me of what we said as we started this entire process over a year ago. We are pursing this adoption until God says to wait.

So we called.

I cried in my office as I tried to figure out what todo. All I could think about was if I was about to become a mom. Was I ready for this? Would I be able to handle this? We just moved in - would our home be ready for this little one? My heart was racing and I was totally not functioning at full speed for remainder of the work day (sorry boss man!). So we prayed, prayed, prayed and prayed.

We received the medical records of both little girls. My heart sank but I could breath. These precious little ones had already had a hard life with many issues that would take many many many visits to specialists. I knew immediately that neither of these girls where our little nugget.

My heart hurt. I wanted it to be our baby. I wanted to see them and the records and know that we were nearing the finish line. But instead God showed us clearly that these babies needed a different family. I was scared that I wouldn't know what to do- that I wouldn't know how to say no to a baby that needs a home. And as I write this I still feel like that sounds so heartless- our home is better than an orphanage right? Yes, but if we had continued to move forward with these girls it would have been for selfish reasons. We would have done it because WE wanted a baby, because WE wanted the process to be over, because WE wanted to celebrate with all of you.

Those are not the reasons to adopt a baby.

So God once again showed us that He is in control. That we are not to get comfortable and feel like we know whats happening. We need to lean on Him. Look to Him in every situation. He is going to build our family when it is time. He IS building our family! These girls may not have been ours, but we are trusting and believing that our little Nugget is out there waiting on us.

So thats the day I almost became a mom.
That God gave us wisdom beyond what we could have done on our own.
That God reminded us that this thing we call life is all in his hands.


So we didn't get matched with our Nugget. But we saw a real baby at the end of all this paperwork - God gave us a glimpse of the day that we will become parents. I'm thankful for Him and His wisdom, and how He works to forever show us His mighty loving hand.

YouCaring Fundraising Page

10 days from an answered prayer

Tomorrow we will be 10 days away from closing on our new home. 

10 days away from God fulfilling a promise He made us when we got married. 

10 days away from something prayed for for over a year. 

10 days away from moving out of our storage unit life style we had for 3 months. 

10 days. 

I want to remember the days that I prayed for this day to come. 

I want to remember how faithful God was even when I felt like He wasn't listening. 

I want to remember all the circles I made thinking I knew the right direction. 

I want to remember how God saw us through a time we had no idea which way to go. 

10 days from having a miracle home. 

I hope this home is filled with Gods love. 

I hope the beds are never empty, the table is always full & the living room is never silent. 

Reed and I prayed for this home. We asked God over a year ago to provide a home that was us. That would have enough space to host many friends, to allow us to pursue our passions and to help us bring home our Nica Nugget. 

10 days we can start that again. 

10 days we can pick up our journey towards our family. 

10 days a long almost 6 month journey of uncertainty will become a long journey of establishing roots and producing good fruit! 

Why It Is So Hard to Write a Thank You

Well dang y'all.
I had every intention of blogging my mind away through this adoption, but honestly it has been heavier than I thought. My mind is so full that trying to figure out what to share when was just another "thing" I didn't need to add to my life. BUT this morning I was sitting here for about the 30 millionth day in a row saying "tonight I'm going to write thank you notes", but spoiler alert I'm probably not going to write a single thank you tonight and here is why.

ADOPTION IS HARD.

That is the short of it. Adoption is hard, it seems like a beautiful God calling that shows you His provision (and it does) but it is also the heaviest thing we have ever done. We sit here thinking every day, morning in my quiet time, every free minute, about what life will be like when we bring our nugget home. We have been preparing for 6 months now, but there is still no "sign" of a little one, just more paperwork to put together, more questions to answer... more waiting.

So while we are unbelievably grateful for the gifts, the encouragement, the financial blessings, it is just a little hard to write a genuine thank you right now. And we believe whole heartedly that those that have been involved need a genuine thank you, not a "thank you for your gift, what a perfect blessing! Follow my blog for more updates!". We want to find the words to express how much it means that because of what they have given we are able to confidently follow a difficult path to a family that we are more certain of than anything in our lives. That each dollar, gift, encouraging word has been affirmation that we are going the right way.

Right now I don't want to sit at the kitchen table and craft a thank you note. I want to get our nugget home. I want to have a phone call that we are on the list, that we have been matched, and that they are ready for us to come meet this already unbelievably loved little one.


If you have given to our family and not heard a response, we are sorry. Our southern families are probably cringing that it has been 6 months with no thank you sent. But trust me, your gift means more than we can put in to words. We WILL write you a note, and it will be a note from the heart and most likely stained with tears of joy.

Gathering Baby Lathrop

Holy Moly I can't believe all the love Reed and I have received since sharing the news about our adoption! I don't just mean on social media, but from dear friends and family that will be a part of our little Faraway babies life forever! Reed and I knew that we would have community interested in hearing our story and why we decided to move forward on something so many say is nothing but hard. We also know that this journey is going to be long and that not everyone is going to be thinking about it constantly like we are. 

So when trying to find a way to tell our nearest and dearest about our decision to grow our family we wanted to give them a physical object that would remind them to pray along with us ever chance they get. As I was trying to use my creative juices to come up with something special to us I realized a promise that God had given us and that it applied to so much more than we thought. 

At the very beginning of our adoption journey, like before we took our first step, God laid this verse on our hearts. It seemed fitting for our family that is spread out across the countries, so it ended up on our fridge as a reminder that though we see Reeds family very little God has promised to bring us all together. Then as our adoption progressed we realized the true reason this verse was put in our lives; a promise from God that He is going to bring our Faraway baby home!

We read through Nehemiah back in January when our church did a series called "Difference Makers". This series broke down the journey that God took Nehemiah on to restore His people.  This was the series that broke our hearts, that made us realize we didn't have any reason to wait. God called us to make moves and He would take care of the rest.

At the time of this series, we knew our hearts had been broken but I don't think we realized the significance of the promise God gave us.

God gave us a promise that was written thousands of years ago, but it could have been written just for us. It fit so perfectly, and became something I prayed over and over again. A promise that truly has taken away my anxiety because I know God will make good on His promise to me.

"Even if your people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my Name." 
Nehemiah 1:9

So when it came time for us to share with our family and friends it only seemed fitting to share with them the promise we were given. These little globes may  not be the nicest things, but they are a physical reminder and promise from God. He IS going to gather up our little Nica baby! 

If you are interested in helping us bring home this little faraway baby feel free to check out our funding page. We will be sharing many opportunities of how you can get involved, so stay tuned :)  

God Broke Our Hearts and We Decided to do Something About it.

Have you ever used the saying "How heart breaking?" or "That just breaks my heart?", I know I have about a million times. But I realized this year that I don't think my heart had ever truly felt heart break, I had never been so emotionally and spiritually broken to actually DO anything about it. But this past January (Jan. 31st 2016) I heard a sermon and realized God had broken my heart completely and I HAD to do something about it.

You are pobably preparing for a post that is gonna touch your heart strings and maybe bring some tears so you are grabbing the tissues. But I want you to know that when your heart breaks it isn't always because of struggle or a hard time. God uses heart break to bring about action, He can use heart ache in ways we never imagined and right now I have a broken heart that has solidified a calling from God, and I couldn't be more excited!

So Reed and I have decided to step in to what God has for us, to make moves on a something God wrecked us with and now we can officially share with  YOU!

We know you now have about a million questions just ready to jump out of your mouth, don't worry we are going to be filling you in every step of the way! We fully intend to use this God given adventure to educate people on the adoption process, and how God breaks hearts to create difference makers that lean on Him to carry out great things. 

Now to answer a few quick questions!

Where are you adopting?

-Nicaragua

How far along in the process are you? 

-We just got accepted by our agency and have started our 6 months worth of paperwork. Our next step is to prepare for a home study!

How Long does it take?

-No one really knows, the variation in wait time with Nicaragua is what deters many people from adopting there. We have 6 months worth of paper work, then we send it to Nicaragua to wait on acceptance and a match. We have seen people matched within 6 months and others having to wait 4 years. We are praying that God will bring us our faraway baby quickly, but also that he will be preparing our hearts through the wait, no matter how long!

Do you have an age range you are looking at?

-We want to remember that adoption is not about getting us a baby, but rather about finding a child a home. So we have selected to stay very open. We are currently signed up for a boy or girl in the 0-5 age range.

Do you still want biological children?

-Yes, but we feel that right now God has broken our hearts for orphans in Nicaragua. We have decided that we want to be the people that do something about it. So we are beginning our adoption journey now and trusting that God is going to build us the perfect family!

How much does adoption cost?

-Well, this is a long answer and I plan to share a LOT more about this in the future. But I will share this for now. It costs a lot more than we have, and we do not want to go in to debt. God has broken our hearts for adoption, and He knows our financial situation better than anyone else. If He feels like it is time for us to adopt then I have no doubt that He will help us in the financial department.

In the mean time check out our Fundraising Page . This is going to be the place that has all the information on our financial goals and timeline, along with ways you can be apart of bringing our faraway baby home! We are going to be doing a bunch of different things ranging from BBQ Dinners, silent auctions, to selling my art work, and other crafts!

These are the questions we have found to be asked the most. There are plenty more details and things I am sure some of you may be interested in. But for now that is our basic story, timeline, and thoughts on the process. We are believing God to do BIG things and to bring us our faraway baby in the perfect time.

God has already done things in perfect time and is blowing our minds every day as we walk with Him through this. We are so excited to be sharing our adventure with you and can't wait to introduce you to our faraway baby sometime soon!

Finding Yourself In The Paint

Have you ever struggled to find yourself? Like to feel confident in your decisions about life? Not that you aren't happy, but just feeling a little awkward teenager-ish??

I was just walking through that stage. I was feelin real awkward, like one day I was a prep, the next day I was country, next day I was goth. Ya know one of those girls that tries out a million different styles because she can't quite figure out where she fits in. Except I wasn't doing it with clothes. I was struggling to find how to express myself through art.

As I have said here MANY many times, I am extremely blessed to have a creative family, my grandmother paints, my aunt is an artist, my mom and other aunt can make junk from the side of the road look like a million bucks. Basically, I was born to be creative. So I tried out a lot. I tried painting furniture, making furniture, water color, acrylic, oil and on and on. I liked them all. I just didn't feel like I was expressing "ME".

Art is a form of expression. Just like some people express themselves through music, writing or speaking. Creating is a gift from God that allows you to express yourself and your story in a unique way, and I don't want to waist that! I want to find how to express myself and my God story through creating. Gah it was such a struggle. Was I doing certain things because I saw other artists be successful with them, or was I doing that because that truly felt natural to me? Did I feel like it was MY story or was I just trying to tell a story someone was interested in...

STRUGGLE BUS!

After talking to an artist I have learned to really love and admired, she told me to put challenges in place. Put restrictions on my paintings. It could be certain sizes, or colors, but these restrictions would allow me to see similarities that are unique to me that I may have missed in the chaos of creating. And ya know, what I did.

I found that I love vibrant colors, buttery strokes, and southern subject matter. When I stepped back and saw how all of these things ran through each piece I created I realized I truly did find myself in the paint!

(find these paintings and more on my website www.gracelangdonart.com)