come and see

We've lived in this lovely house for over one year now. When we first moved in and tried to settle our things inside, it felt strange, small (by comparison with our last house), and foreign. I've moved enough in my life, a large handful of times as an Air Force kid and another handful of times as an Air Force wife, to expect this by now. It takes me a good year to feel at home in my new environment. It takes that long for each room to soak up enough memories to become familiar. The hardest time for me can be 6-8 months after moving in, when I'm no longer brand new, but also not feeling established in the new surroundings yet. Especially with the huge life change we made in leaving the military, it was easy for me to miss our old home and wonder if we'd made the right decision. One day in March, about five months ago, I wrote in my prayer journal about a few things that were on my mind. Writing is one way I really enjoy talking with God and processing life. I ended the entry by asking God to do something crazy tomorrow to show His power in our family. What happened the next day was one of the craziest moments of my life.

This story won't be new to my Facebook family, because I shared it immediately out of an overwhelming desire to shout from the internet rooftop this reminder that God is powerfully in control of every detail of our lives. But I love my non-Facebook family so much that I need to share this with you, too! I actually have a great deal of respect for those of you who continue to live your lives apart from social media. And it's not right that you sometimes miss the great stories, so here you go.

The day after I made this request of God in prayer, we had a visitor. We're renting, and our landlord had from time to time sent out a kind, helpful emissary named George. He'd been by to feed the grass before, and on this March day he was here to cut down two small trees in the backyard and replace them with a palm tree. Though we'd never met our landlord, he had been absolutely wonderful to us from day one, going above and beyond in taking care of our family. He even paid to install a solid backyard fence for the kids shortly after we moved in - a huge and unexpected blessing.

On this day, we watched through the sliding glass door as George cut down the trees. He worked diligently, carrying the branches around the side of the house to the curb. He worked with an unassuming air, but the shiny black Cadillac in the driveway told us this wasn't his day job. He was obviously a friend of the landlord, doing him a favor by taking care of his house. At my urging, Mason popped his head out back with an offer to help, but George politely declined. His task was nearing completion and I just couldn't let him leave without thanking him properly for all of his hard work. I ran outside and met him in the front yard, his arms full of branches. From the few times we'd spoken before, I knew that he had a foreign accent, but it was decidedly not Hispanic. We live in a Hispanic area of town, so any other accent stands out sharply to us. I'd been wondering where he was from, so I decided to ask him after thanking him for his work. Our conversation went like this:

"Your accent is beautiful. Where are you from?"

"I'm from Bulgaria," came his reply with that thick, rolling accent.

"NO WAY! We have a daughter from Vidin!!"

George's eyes grew wide and his mouth dropped open. With a big smile, he shouted, "GET OUT! I'M FROM VIDIN!!!"

At this point I'm sure I practically shrieked at him. It was a chilling moment in the best sense. After I gleefully babbled at him for a moment about adopting a girl from Vidin, I ran inside to get Kami and Mason, and we enjoyed a conversation about Bulgaria in the driveway. He spoke a bit in Bulgarian to Kami, who stopped what she was doing, listened, and responded with one word: "Vidin." I'm sure she understood where he was from. It turns out that George is actually the cousin of the owner, who is also from Vidin. 

Vidin is a town of less than 50,000 people in the northwest corner of Bulgaria. Of all of the houses we could have chosen in Central Florida, we rented this home sight unseen through a property management company while we were still in Louisiana. 

It was no surprise that two days later we received an e-mail from the property management company stating that the owner wanted to renew our lease for another year at the same rate.

Only God could orchestrate something like this. And it came at the perfect time, because in March we were still struggling in the trenches with Kami. I still wondered if we were really going to make it out of the woods and if we were really the right family for her. This was her Creator and mine, the LORD of the universe, responding to my fearful, exhausted questions with a resounding "Yes! Yes, Christen, she is in the right family, and you are in the right house, and Mason is in the right job. And I AM."

Come and see what our God has done, what awesome miracles he performs for people! 

Psalm 66:5