On the surface, our family looks like any other: husband and wife, four kids. We are the quintessential American family. It’s only after getting to know us that someone might come to realize what a struggle it has been to piece our family together. Infertility, miscarriage, foster care, and failed adoptions along with live births and successful adoptions have all factored in these past nine years. And even now, as we’ve started to settle into a routine, a daily pattern for our family, there are questions about birth parents, mental illness, and struggles in school that arise.

But we are seeing glimpses of hope, ways that God is showing up, meeting our family in tangible ways and speaking to our children. And we keep believing for good things. For God things, to be honest. We can imagine the future and we believe it is blessed. This may not be what we had originally thought our family would look like, but we are patchworked together perfectly by our creator, and we are flourishing.

What part of your life doesn’t look like what you had planned? How can you trust God with what is, while waiting on what is to come?