Sovereignty of God

The kids were not happy when our much anticipated vacation to Colonial Williamsburg had to be canceled. Saturday was a long, hard day for me. I was exhausted, worried about the asthmatic one and sad for my big kids. I hate when I can not keep promises to my kids.

Saturday the big kids did really well. I had been up the majority of the night before, they played quietly while I napped. Once I was rested, we went to drop off Nesiah and Lady. I picked up chinese and a movie. We have been saving for this vacation and had not had chinese in several months so this was a huge treat.

Saturday night was awful, not only was I dealing with a sick kid, but the reality that I was going to break my kids hearts. They were going to need to give up yet another  fun event.


Sunday morning I informed them that we could not go that day and possibly not at all. I was texting the lady in charge of the retreat, trying to work out details to postpone our trip.

My kids were angry and rightly so. I gave them space to deal with their emotions. We had a long chat about answered prayers and hard things in life.

See this is the thing, God has answered so many prayers for us. My friends all joke that if they want something, they will simply ask us to pray for it for them. My kids wanted to know exactly why God would not answer this prayer for healing. Did God not know that they wanted to have fun? Did God not want them to have fun?

 We believe that God gives us the desires of our hearts. BUT ONLY IF THEY ALIGN WITH HIS PLAN FOR US. We believe that God is sovereign, which means that sometimes He will not give us what we want, because it is not His best for us.

We talked about dealing with accepting hard things, accepting when we don't get things we want. We hashed out why God would not give them what they/we wanted.

We talked about feeling upset and angry but not focusing on the negative.


(Several weeks ago I was at an adoption training. The trainer shared something that stuck with me. So many biological parents were not taught/given the tools to handle crisis or hard things. They do not have the ability to manage life's curve balls. We have coping skills, learned from life experiences in a healthy family. So many biological parents do not have that and when life comes at them with hard things they self medicate or self destruct)

So I decided this was a teaching moment. A time to teach and model how to handle big disappointments in life.

We also believe that when God says "no" then we need to make the best out of what we have. "Life is hard, deal with it" is one of my mantras.

So as we were discussing and venting, my friend texted me. They invited us over for lunch and snowmobile rides. The attitude in our house changed pretty quickly with that invitation. We were thankful for friends and the kids angry attitudes softened.


Sunday night was not great. I decided that it was now time to salvage this vacation.

My friend is also one who always helps me sort out life and see the light when I am drowning. She and I had a good discussion on how to salvage our vacation, how to make it fun and how to regroup.

At this point the kids were open to alternatives because really Saturday and Sunday had been fun, despite the disappointments.

So we decided to do a staycation. The only problem was, we still had the health issues to contend with. So we are taking each day as it comes. So far it has been quite fun. We made a list of things we would like to see and do, using the money put aside for the Williamsburg vacation.