The WOW experience!

Day – whatever… I lost track!

One of the best parts of this adoption journey so far is watching Tia and Garrett enjoy some of everyday pleasures of life that we so often take for granted. Things like being able to tie your own shoes (because they have never had shoes), going out to eat and ordering what you want (because they have never had a opportunity to choose what they wanted to eat) and taking a hot shower (because they have never had access to hot water.

Yesterday I helped Garrett with a shower (he hasn’t had many because of the cast on his broken arm). I was trying to be quick about it and get it done, but each time I would start to turn off the water, he would get a little smile on his face and say “tinish more, tinish more daddy.” (“tinish is the word for “a little”). So we spent 10-15 more minutes with a little more hot water on his head and on his face and on his back… it was incredible to watch how much joy he was experiencing.

I love to watch their faces with each new experience and I love being able to provide these small (but huge) things each day for them. I find myself looking for the new experiences that each day will bring. At the same time, I know the whole new world of new experiences that await them in the US. I can’t wait to take them out to Harrisburg Park and let them kick the soccer ball around on the nicest grass fields they have ever seen. I can’t wait to take them to our house and watch them play and relax and be at home. I can’t wait to take them to Knoxville to my parents house and let them ride on the ski boat. I can’t wait to take them to church and introduce them to the tons of people that have prayed and fasted for them. So many things I can’t wait for them to experience… every single one is going to be a huge WOW moment.

Several things about these experiences remind me of our great and awesome God. In some ways I am completely in awe at the things God is allowing us to experience in our church and in our life. With each new person who accepts Christ, each new person that makes radical steps of faith and each new way that God provides for me as I trust him. I am WOWWED and AWED by so much of it. At the same time, I think God is telling me, “David, you haven’t seen nothing yet!”

1 Corinthians 2:9 “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.” This is such a simple idea with huge implications. Right now I understand this better than I ever had. It is the character of God to plan and prepare new experiences for us to engage – each with its own plan and purpose. I think He can’t wait for some of you to trust him enough to enjoy everything He has planned for those that love him. There is so much he wants us to experience and he has given us His Spirit to guide us on these experiences. The next verse in 1 Corinthians 2 says, 10 But* it was to us that God revealed these things by his Spirit. For his Spirit searches out everything and shows us God’s deep secrets. 11 No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. 12 And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.

So while there are some really cool experiences that wait for us here in this life, there is a whole different world that God has prepared for us to experience. It is a world that we will never experience until heaven.

1 Corinthians 13:12 Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.* All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

I understand this so much better right now because I am experiencing on a micro scale this same reality. When I try to tell Garrett and Tia about our home in America, I can tell they get excited but they really have no clue because they have nothing to compare it to. I think it is like God trying to describe to us what heaven is going to be like… we can get excited about it, but we really have no clue. And still I can’t wait!