As we journey through each day of the Advent season, we’ve gathered special stories from Lifeline families, staff, and friends to share with you, testifying to how the hand of the Lord and the Character of Christ have been magnified through their children and in their families…

I am a math teacher by trade. While I am beyond blessed to be able to leave my classroom and textbooks behind to stay at home with our son, my mind still thinks critically in most situations. Maybe that’s why, as I think about the evidence of God working throughout our adoption journey, I think about the logistics of it all. God has taken the most mundane of experiences and turned them into something beautiful as only He can do.

The first thing that comes to my mind is the airport in Beijing.

My husband and I were wandering around the airport looking for something to eat before the flight that would take us to our son’s province when we heard our names being called over a loud speaker. We barely recognized our names in the broken English, but because of our location we could hear the lady clearly when she repeated our names a second time. The airline we were traveling on required a new boarding pass to be printed, and they were looking for us to check in. Although we thought we were extremely early for our flight and just wasting time meandering around, God had us ride up that particular escalator at the exact moment our names were being called. That may seem like absolutely nothing… not even worth mentioning… but then I think about the fact that if we had been only a few moments earlier or later (or if we had chosen a different route) we would have missed our names being called and would have been in a complete panic when it came time to board our flight with the wrong boarding passes.

Some time later while waiting to board that flight, we met what have become very dear friends who were also about to board the flight to meet their new son. On that same flight, we were seated next to a precious Chinese lady who was traveling home from Mississippi.

Of all of the people on the flight, God had us sitting next to an encouraging, God-fearing and English-speaking new friend who had been in our neighboring state for the past 10 months.

The math teacher in me wants to think through the probability of all of those things happening. What are the chances? We know it wasn’t chance, though.  We know that God was using every tiny instance to remind us that He was there.

He knew that we were anxious about bringing home our first child as new parents. He knew that we needed to feel His closeness.  He knew that we were looking for Him in ways that we had never looked before. He knew that we needed Him like never before. He knew that it doesn’t take huge occurrences (although there were plenty of those, too) to make Himself known.

He chose to use those seemingly minor situations to remind us that He cared about every aspect of our journey – both literal and figurative – as we traveled to bring our son home to his forever family. These few instances that I’ve shared here only span a time frame of a few hours.  There is an almost never-ending list of ways that God proved Himself to be ever present throughout the entire process as we chose to follow His plan for our family through adoption. Our sweet boy, who has been home now for just over six months, is a constant reminder of Emmanuel “God with us.”

As we enter this season of advent, I pray that we can always be so sensitive to God’s hand as He guides us. I pray that it doesn’t take huge, life-altering events for us to notice Him. I pray that we can always enjoy the incredible ways that He makes Himself known through the seemingly boring logistics of life itself, and that we can continue to find His joy, hope, peace, and love in every situation. Big or small. This season and always.

Jerica Vanoy, Lifeline Adoptive Mom