Your life can change in a moment's notice!

On New Year's Day of this year, my husband Joel and I were tiling our laundry room when we received a phone call from our local law enforcement asking about Joel's sister, Angie. Joel's parents had submitted a missing person's report on Angie. She was to go to her home that she shared with her ex-husband on New Year's Eve to get keys to the property and pick up her two children. She never returned that evening. Joel met the Sherriff's Department at her home and allowed them to enter. What they found that morning changed our lives forever. Her ex-husband her suffocated her and killed two other women - one in the home and a neighbor. He then fled our county with the two smaller children. We issued Amber Alerts and waited. They located him approximately 100 miles from our home with the two children. After a lengthy standoff, he committed suicide and the two children were rescued safely from the home. Angie had three children. Our life was forever changed in that moment. Joel and I along with our two children - Jacob and Keaton - met Joel's parents at the Sherriff's Department and brought the children home with us. Overnight we went from 2 children to 5 children. The last 5 months have been an incredible time of adjustment. We've spent many hours with counselors, in court, late nights talking, lots of crying and grief - it's just been plain tough. But I am reminded in Isaiah 55:8 that "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." In my limited human capacity, I simply cannot understand God's ways in his event. But I know his character and trust in His plan - because He has told me that his thoughts and ways are higher than anything I can imagine. In Jeremiah 29:11 He promises me that "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." So there is where I leave it and follow it from day to day. I trust without reservation my Heavenly Father.