Our Adoption Journey: Seen any Jeeps lately?

I'm blessed to work at a school where we are encouraged to pray for one another. A couple weeks ago, one of my colleagues asked the staff to pray for a friend of her family's. She suggested that every time we see a Lexus, we would be reminded to pray for Lexxa since their names are so similar. I remember driving home that night and the multiple reminders I saw to pray for her on my 40-minute commute. Now every time I see a Lexus, the response is automatic and I say a quick prayer for Lexxa.

I thought I could use this same technique for our little girl. Unfortunately, there isn't a car name that works like Lexxa/Lexus with our daughter's given name so I had to improvise. Travis and I have had "go on a safari in Africa" on our bucket list ever since I can remember and this is pretty much the picture I had in mind of what that would look like:

So I started making the connection between seeing a Jeep and praying for our daughter in Africa. I love the gentle reminders to stop what I'm doing and pray for our little girl. Now before this started, I probably would have said that Jeeps aren't very common where we live. Now I literally see them EVERYWHERE and one day I was almost hit by two different ones! I told Travis about my new reminder/prayer system and now we shout out "JEEP!" when we see one when we're together.

So I would invite you to pick up our Jeep/prayer habit for our daughter. You'll be surprised how many times God puts one in your path to remind you. Today I came out from church, then the library, then the grocery store and the then the animal shelter and one (or two!) had parked right next to me each time (looks like I may need to practice my parking!).

Here are our specific prayer requests:
*That our little girl remain physically healthy and strong. One of a set of twins that was in process of being adopted by a family with our agency passed away this week from typhoid and malaria in the same region of DR Congo as our daughter. I can't imagine the heartbreak this family is going through right now so please keep them in your prayers as well.

*That our adoption processes in DR Congo will go smoothly. Our dossier was sent in a few weeks ago and we are still waiting to hear when our court case will be heard by a judge. We are praying that there are no hiccups in the process and that it will go even faster than we are expecting.

*That our daughter will see our faces in her dreams. Here's the back story on this one: When I started telling people at school that we were adopting, more and more moms would come up to me in the carpool line or at lunch duty and say, "We adopted too!". I loved that I was surrounded by people who had gone through what we were doing and could look back and say that it was all worth it. I had coffee dates with a handful of these moms and was given tons of great advice. One of the most memorable conversations was with the mom of one of my 7th graders whose family adopted from Ethiopia. I asked her if there were any problems attaching with her son (google "attachment and adoption" if you, like me pre-2010, have no idea what this is) and she said no. I asked her why she thought this was and she simply said, "We prayed every night that he would see our family in his dreams and when we met him, I felt like he recognized us". I'm sure she won't care that I'm stealing her idea (thanks, Nicki!) but I love that visual and in my mind, I picture our baby sleeping soundly without a care in the world and seeing the faces of her mom and dad in her dreams. We pray every night that she'll recognize us on the day we are finally able to bring her home.

*That we will not worry. I admit that this process has brought out my true nature as a "worry-wart" because 100% of it is now out of my control. I have this verse pinned to my bulletin board at school and need to reread it daily as a reminder of who's in control:
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?"
Matthew 6:25-27