Happy September! I'm so excited to continue our Give Scarves now that cooler weather is upon us. I love being able to hear from adoptive families and give you all the opportunity to support them- and then wear a tangible reminder as we pray for them throughout their journey. Patrick and I have known this month's family, Matt and Jordan McGuire, for awhile- growing up in Louisville, attending CCU and now getting to know Matt's sweet family in Evansville. Jordan shares with us their story below...
We live in Louisville, KY where Matt is a
Community Pastor at Southeast Christian Church and I am starting to work
with a ministry called Life in Abundance. We have been married for
four years and we love getting to do ministry and life together. It was
about a year and a half ago that we wanted to begin growing our family.
We had talked about adoption and how cool it would be, but we had
certain ideas of what that should look like, such as having biological
children first and then adopting. After things not going as we had
planned and taking a mission trip to Africa with a group from our
church, God opened our hearts to the idea of adoption despite our
misconceptions. We learned pretty quickly that this was not a second
best choice, but that it was what God was calling us to. As of right
now we are in the process to adopt a sibling group of two.
The
most difficult part of the process so far is the unknown. We don’t
know how long it will take, what our child(ren) will look like, if we
will be referred to siblings or not. It all seems like it is up in the
air, but we know that God knows and that has been the most comforting
part of all of this. The most amazing thing has definitely been the
support from the body of Christ. People have been so eager to help us
in a variety of ways, whether that is through a bake sale, helping us
set up for our fundraiser, or just giving above and beyond what we could
imagine. It has been a huge encouragement in this process.
I
think there was a lot of entitlement in our hearts as we started this
process. Here we had been trying to grow our family and it had yet to
happen, then to think of having to wait years to even adopt was very
difficult. Through great conversations with our adoption agency, we
realized that this is a privilege that we get to enjoy. We don’t
deserve any of it, yet God can use broken things of this world to bring
hope and healing. We have also come face to face with the gospel in
ways that we hadn’t before, especially as we have gone through our
adoption education and heard about the things we could face, but we
realize that there is nothing too ugly in us that would make God not
love us. We have been adopted into His family when we accepted Jesus
and He loves us despite our sinfulness.
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This black & gray houndstooth scarf is the featured
Give Scarf this month. (while supplies last)
All profit from the sales of this scarf style will go directly to the McGuire Adoption fund! {
CLICK HERE} to purchase. We hope you love your scarves- be sure to tag us (@everydaypitpat) on Instagram and use #mcguireadoption so they can see all of your support!