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Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Michelle Wiger's invitation is awaiting your response
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Michelle Wiger's invitation is awaiting your response
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Wednesday, December 3, 2014
I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn
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Thursday, April 1, 2010
Happy Easter!
Ephesians 1 (The Message)
Ephesians 1
I, Paul, am under God's plan as an apostle, a special agent of Christ Jesus, writing to you faithful believers in Ephesus. I greet you with the grace and peace poured into our lives by God our Father and our Master, Jesus Christ.
The God of Glory
How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He's the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.
Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we're a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.
It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.
It's in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it (this Message of your salvation), found yourselves home free—signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit. This signet from God is the first installment on what's coming, a reminder that we'll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life.
That's why, when I heard of the solid trust you have in the Master Jesus and your outpouring of love to all the followers of Jesus, I couldn't stop thanking God for you—every time I prayed, I'd think of you and give thanks. But I do more than thank. I ask—ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory—to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for his followers, oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him—endless energy, boundless strength!
All this energy issues from Christ: God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ's body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence.
Ephesians 1
I, Paul, am under God's plan as an apostle, a special agent of Christ Jesus, writing to you faithful believers in Ephesus. I greet you with the grace and peace poured into our lives by God our Father and our Master, Jesus Christ.
The God of Glory
How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He's the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.
Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we're a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.
It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.
It's in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it (this Message of your salvation), found yourselves home free—signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit. This signet from God is the first installment on what's coming, a reminder that we'll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life.
That's why, when I heard of the solid trust you have in the Master Jesus and your outpouring of love to all the followers of Jesus, I couldn't stop thanking God for you—every time I prayed, I'd think of you and give thanks. But I do more than thank. I ask—ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory—to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for his followers, oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him—endless energy, boundless strength!
All this energy issues from Christ: God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ's body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence.
Monday, March 29, 2010
So, here's a little something
I wrote this article for my church's women's ministry newsletter about our adoption journey. It's very abbreviated, but since I didn't want to blog while we were waiting....and waiting....and waiting for Joshua here's a teeny bit of background on how we got here. If anyone's still out there : )
My husband and I talked about wanting to adopt before we were even married. We knew that adoption wasn’t “Plan B” as in our backup plan if we weren’t able to have children. Both of our extended families have wonderful adoption stories and we knew that adoption was a privilege and an important part of God’s family design “In love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the One He loves.” Eph 1:5-6. We didn’t know where that desire would take us or if we would be able to adopt, we just knew we wanted to.
We got pregnant with our first son, Jackson right away and planned to have another child so that they would be exactly two years apart. What’s the saying? If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans? We struggled with infertility and had no answers to it, so we decided to pursue adoption right away so our children would be closer in age. We prayed and researched all the options and each of us on our own felt that our next child would come from China.
We trudged through 6 months of paperwork and many fees to be approved and got our “Log in Date” June 23, 2006. At that point adoptions were being completed in around 8th months from the log in date, so we felt confident our family would be complete within that year and started getting ready for another baby. Again, we had our own plans and God had His own plans. The adoptions from China suddenly slowed down dramatically. The months of waiting turned into years. It was painful many times. I suffered a miscarriage during that wait and we saw our funding dwindle as we had to update our information with government offices over and over. It became difficult to answer everyone’s questions. I just didn’t know when or even if we would be able to bring our child home and didn’t know how to comfort others, let alone myself.
We had heard about China’s Waiting Child program for special needs kids and had applied for that program while waiting for a “healthy baby”, but the children’s files we saw were not the right fit for our family and it became difficult to turn down children. Thankfully, we saw those kids being adopted quickly by other families, so we knew God had found them their home, but it was a hard process for us.
We had finally gotten to the point of wanting to quit the process, be content as a family of three and maybe focus more of our volunteer time on orphans in general. Our social worker was visiting last summer and strongly urged us to try the waiting children program again so we prayed and opened our hearts to wherever God would lead us. Before we even had our updated application done, our family coordinator called excitedly with a referral, a possible child for us. As soon as we saw Joshua’s face, we knew he was ours. It was funny, after years of no news, no movement, suddenly we were on the fast track to get everything in order and get to China. Joshua’s “Gotcha Day” was Monday January 25th, he was with his forever family and we were forever changed.
I gained so much more than a son that I love dearly, I also gained in my walk and knowledge of the Lord more than I ever considered way back when we first started talking about adoption 10 years ago. I wouldn’t change any of it.
My husband and I talked about wanting to adopt before we were even married. We knew that adoption wasn’t “Plan B” as in our backup plan if we weren’t able to have children. Both of our extended families have wonderful adoption stories and we knew that adoption was a privilege and an important part of God’s family design “In love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the One He loves.” Eph 1:5-6. We didn’t know where that desire would take us or if we would be able to adopt, we just knew we wanted to.
We got pregnant with our first son, Jackson right away and planned to have another child so that they would be exactly two years apart. What’s the saying? If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans? We struggled with infertility and had no answers to it, so we decided to pursue adoption right away so our children would be closer in age. We prayed and researched all the options and each of us on our own felt that our next child would come from China.
We trudged through 6 months of paperwork and many fees to be approved and got our “Log in Date” June 23, 2006. At that point adoptions were being completed in around 8th months from the log in date, so we felt confident our family would be complete within that year and started getting ready for another baby. Again, we had our own plans and God had His own plans. The adoptions from China suddenly slowed down dramatically. The months of waiting turned into years. It was painful many times. I suffered a miscarriage during that wait and we saw our funding dwindle as we had to update our information with government offices over and over. It became difficult to answer everyone’s questions. I just didn’t know when or even if we would be able to bring our child home and didn’t know how to comfort others, let alone myself.
We had heard about China’s Waiting Child program for special needs kids and had applied for that program while waiting for a “healthy baby”, but the children’s files we saw were not the right fit for our family and it became difficult to turn down children. Thankfully, we saw those kids being adopted quickly by other families, so we knew God had found them their home, but it was a hard process for us.
We had finally gotten to the point of wanting to quit the process, be content as a family of three and maybe focus more of our volunteer time on orphans in general. Our social worker was visiting last summer and strongly urged us to try the waiting children program again so we prayed and opened our hearts to wherever God would lead us. Before we even had our updated application done, our family coordinator called excitedly with a referral, a possible child for us. As soon as we saw Joshua’s face, we knew he was ours. It was funny, after years of no news, no movement, suddenly we were on the fast track to get everything in order and get to China. Joshua’s “Gotcha Day” was Monday January 25th, he was with his forever family and we were forever changed.
I gained so much more than a son that I love dearly, I also gained in my walk and knowledge of the Lord more than I ever considered way back when we first started talking about adoption 10 years ago. I wouldn’t change any of it.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
I guess it's been long enough since I posted - it's about time huh!
I have to start by saying THANK YOU to so many of you. You know who you are and I'm not listing names because there are so many of you to thank!! Thank you for checking our house while we were gone, for break ins or for random frozen pop cans bursting. Thank you for watering my plants even though you were scared to and for shoveling our driveway over and over. Thank you for picking our sorry selves up from the airport and not mentioning how awful we looked. Thank you for filling our refrigerator with food, decorating our house with welcome home signs, flowers, balloons and even making Josh's room more cute (special shout out thanks to my dear M.I.L. Ruth for that one!) Thanks to so many of you for bringing us meals (yum), bringing us cool clothes for Josh, praying for us and offering to help in so many ways. Thank you for planning, hosting and coming to the wonderful co-shower and for all the cool clothes and fun new toys Josh got. Jackson should also probably thank you for the cool new toys as well. : ) Especially thank you for being so warm and welcoming to Joshua and for your excitement for our family. Adoption is a wonderful choice that brings with it more blessings than you would think, including character growth and patience.
Josh was worth it though, what a happy guy. He loves his new room/house/toys etc. He's good with most of the food we eat, so he's easy to feed. He even likes folding laundry, helping me vacuum and ...drum roll please.....he likes running errands!!!! Yes, that wasn't a typo, he's so happy to roll through Target in a cart and wave hello at everyone and then repeat that through Trader Joe's, the gas station, wherever. I pray to the Lord God Almighty that this love of errands persists, at least until he's in school full time : )
We are adjusting well. It took us a solid week or more to sleep while the sun was down and three of us have nasty colds, but we're alive and well otherwise. Our only hiccup along the way has been that Josh is TERRIFIED of our westie, Winnie. I told him the other day he was going to have to adjust because Winnie's my furry baby and she's not going anywhere! He'll come around though, he's happy to throw her a ball and have her retrieve it as long as she doesn't touch him.
Jackson has been really sweet much of the time. He says that Josh is annoying because he copys everything he does, but I think he secretly likes it. Jack's always telling Josh that he loves him and he keep asking to sleep on the floor of Josh's room every night. He likes to show off his new brother to friends and likes to show off for his new brother. He tried extra hard at swimming lessons last night to impress Josh. It was so cute!
Well, we're doing really well here, with much help from our dear friends and family. We love you all! I promise to write more often, especially since Josh takes a 3 hour nap every day!!! (whoo hoo!) I forgot how much I loved nap time when Jackson was little.
I also promise to upload pictures here soon.
Love for now
Michelle
I have to start by saying THANK YOU to so many of you. You know who you are and I'm not listing names because there are so many of you to thank!! Thank you for checking our house while we were gone, for break ins or for random frozen pop cans bursting. Thank you for watering my plants even though you were scared to and for shoveling our driveway over and over. Thank you for picking our sorry selves up from the airport and not mentioning how awful we looked. Thank you for filling our refrigerator with food, decorating our house with welcome home signs, flowers, balloons and even making Josh's room more cute (special shout out thanks to my dear M.I.L. Ruth for that one!) Thanks to so many of you for bringing us meals (yum), bringing us cool clothes for Josh, praying for us and offering to help in so many ways. Thank you for planning, hosting and coming to the wonderful co-shower and for all the cool clothes and fun new toys Josh got. Jackson should also probably thank you for the cool new toys as well. : ) Especially thank you for being so warm and welcoming to Joshua and for your excitement for our family. Adoption is a wonderful choice that brings with it more blessings than you would think, including character growth and patience.
Josh was worth it though, what a happy guy. He loves his new room/house/toys etc. He's good with most of the food we eat, so he's easy to feed. He even likes folding laundry, helping me vacuum and ...drum roll please.....he likes running errands!!!! Yes, that wasn't a typo, he's so happy to roll through Target in a cart and wave hello at everyone and then repeat that through Trader Joe's, the gas station, wherever. I pray to the Lord God Almighty that this love of errands persists, at least until he's in school full time : )
We are adjusting well. It took us a solid week or more to sleep while the sun was down and three of us have nasty colds, but we're alive and well otherwise. Our only hiccup along the way has been that Josh is TERRIFIED of our westie, Winnie. I told him the other day he was going to have to adjust because Winnie's my furry baby and she's not going anywhere! He'll come around though, he's happy to throw her a ball and have her retrieve it as long as she doesn't touch him.
Jackson has been really sweet much of the time. He says that Josh is annoying because he copys everything he does, but I think he secretly likes it. Jack's always telling Josh that he loves him and he keep asking to sleep on the floor of Josh's room every night. He likes to show off his new brother to friends and likes to show off for his new brother. He tried extra hard at swimming lessons last night to impress Josh. It was so cute!
Well, we're doing really well here, with much help from our dear friends and family. We love you all! I promise to write more often, especially since Josh takes a 3 hour nap every day!!! (whoo hoo!) I forgot how much I loved nap time when Jackson was little.
I also promise to upload pictures here soon.
Love for now
Michelle
Monday, February 8, 2010
Video from Gotcha Room
Below is a brief video showing the "Gotcha Room".
- This is the room that the adoptive parents were brought to in Guangzhou to meet their adoptive children.
- Most of the kids had been brought to this location from other parts of the province (Joshua was from Shenzhen about 75 miles away).
- The kids were located in a waiting room/play area next to the big room shown in the video.
- One by one, the adoptive parents were brought up to meet their kids.
- There was one other couple from our adoption agency there that day. We might have been the only Americans there, most of the couples seemed to be from Europe (Spain, Italy).
- As you can hear, the room was extremely loud....filled with terrified kids meeting their strange new parents, anxious parents, and all different languages being spoken.
- It was a crazy, stressful, exhausting, overwhelmingly emotional day!
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