The Vision

I love journals. They provide very good details and specific dates to what you would usually forget with time. I strongly suggest that you journal. Some people say that they just aren’t “journal people.” Well, I wasn’t either, but I’m sure glad that I disciplined myself to do it. It’s not about journaling your feelings or your emotions (although you do that sometimes). Some people’s excuse is that they don’t want people to see on paper how they are feeling or have felt in the past...they are even afraid of damaging family relations. But, you don’t even have to put that kind of stuff in your journal. More importantly it’s about making sure you log the things that God is doing in your life...what an encouragement to you when you look back on those books and what an encouragement they can be to others who read them, even after you are dead and gone. Although our journals of today aren’t divinely inspired like the Bible, that is one of the great features of the Bible, is it not? Aren’t we so encouraged by the lives of the ordinary people in the Bible who God used and did extraordinary things with and through?

But, that’s not really what this post is about...I just had to share that because although I’ve forgotten the specific details and dates of what I’m about to share, thanks to my handy dandy journal, it is all re-submitted in my brain. So, about the vision...

I posted a while back about my passion for adoption and seeing Steven Curtis Chapmans’s video “When Love Takes You In.” I even posted that video on my blog. We saw that video on Aug. 10th, 2002. Then...

From my journal (written 9-14-02):
On Aug. 29th I was in the shower. I got, what I believe to be, a vision of my future. I was older. We had lived in a different country for years, done the whole adoption thing, and I was traveling around to different churches here in the states, speaking to congregations about the need for adoption of these children in different countries. It was awesome. It got me so excited.

I told Joel about it that night. His eyes started welling up with tears. I asked him why he was crying. He said that since the beginning he really felt like this was about much more than just us adopting kids.

From my own recollection at this point, I believe this to be the only vision I've ever had. It was split-second and I got all that information. It was also so exciting and inspiring. You know how when you just wake up from a dream you know God has given you or you hear Him very clearly on something in your quiet time...you are just so pumped and full of anticipation about what He is going to do? That's what it was like.

So awesome. And it's especially very exciting considering where we are now and just the things that have happened recently. More on that in the following post.