Preliminary Court Hearing

Our preliminary court hearing is finally set. Unfortunately it is not until the 19th, a very long time after our documents were submitted to Russia. We should find out our court date on that day. From the two families that I know of that have completed the process/are ahead of us in the process in the Volgograd Region, the court date was approximately 2 weeks after the preliminary hearing. We are hoping that this will be the case for us as well. Our medicals expire the beginning of October (they are only good for 90 days) and I cannot explain to you how much I do not want to have to redo all of that…blood work, chest x-rays, TB skin test, letter from the doctor’s office, copies of the doctor’s license, form to fill out…sigh. We are just going to wait and see what the judge has to say after the preliminary hearing and hope that we don’t have to redo all of it. Ideally we want our court date before they expire, if not that, then maybe the judge will at least let it slide by a few days.

It’s just frustrating because things continue to go so slowly! We had been told by our facilitator in Moscow that he could see us being back for our second trip by the end of July, which would put Elijah home by now. And now it’s (optimistically) looking like our court hearing won’t be until the beginning of October, which puts us bringing him home in November. Like I keep saying, my concern does not lie with me waiting, it lies with Elijah waiting.

I wish I could be more excited about getting this date and getting one more step in the right direction, but I’m just not. I don’t really know how to pray anymore to be honest. We prayed that we would be back for court the end of July, that date came and went. Then we prayed our court documents would be submitted quickly and then that didn’t happen. We prayed that we would get a preliminary hearing soon after submitting documents to court and then that didn’t happen.

The Lord wants us to bring our requests to Him, He wants us to pray and believe, but it’s REALLY hard to when you have prayed for so many things that haven’t happened. Please don’t get me wrong, I know that God’s in control and I know that His plan is perfect, but it’s really hard to pray specifically for things when those prayers haven’t been answered in the past. I know that the Lord is capable of miracles, I just have a hard time seeing how my prayers have an impact on that…

I know God sees the bigger picture and I just have to trust in that. But my heart keeps getting crushed each time I GENUINELY believe He will answer our prayers in the way we are praying because they appear to be in our child’s best interest and then He doesn’t.

Looking back on our miscarriage experience…we prayed and believed with our whole hearts that the Lord would give our baby a heartbeat again. We truly believed that He would receive so much glory through that miracle. That didn’t happen. Right afterwards we were so confused about why He would allow that, but looking back I SEE. Without us losing our baby girl, Elijah wouldn’t have a mommy and a daddy and we wouldn’t have the honor of being his mommy and daddy! God is receiving so much glory through this process and our baby girl is better off with Jesus! I can truly SEE now why God didn’t answer our prayers in the way we prayed. He had a much bigger plan than we could ever imagine…and I would never want to change any bit of it.

I just have to trust that He sees something we don’t see now too. That He does have a plan in all of this and is protecting our baby boy through it all. So I will believe that He sees the whole picture. I will believe that He continues to hold Elijah in His hands. I will believe that He is bigger than all of this timing. I will believe that He is bigger than paperwork. I will believe that He hears every single one of our prayers. I will believe that He is sovereign.

My prayer… Lord…"I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!" Mark 9:24