Time to say Goodbye...

God answers prayers.

We, not one of us, are privy to His purpose and will.  We follow Him blindly in faith that He is working all things for our good.

He promises to lead us through the valley, not around it.  This means He is with us when we are with Him.

It is with a heavy heart that we tell you that L is no longer living with us.

There has been much sadness, anger, and crying over this decision, and it did not come lightly.  We came to our decision after much talking and counseling about what was best for L and what was best for us.

We will miss him.

There is a family for him somewhere.

Our prayers are that his time with us left an impression on him that will grow.  What a family is like.  What putting God first is like.  What being vulnerable is like.

The night before he left, Mike, not knowing he was leaving the next day, spent quite some time with him, one on one, talking with him about some of his struggles.  Mike told him that Christ is the one true way.  He told L that he needed to work on his relationship with Christ, to seek Him out in all things and ask himself "Is what I am about to do going to honor Christ?"

We both held and prayed over him at the kitchen table that night, not knowing that it was the last time we would get the chance.  We prayed that he would open his heart to Christ's leadership and that God would make Himself so visible to L that he could not help but seek him out.

Looking back, we have questioned our faith in this matter.  We have asked "Were we following God's will in this or our own desire?"  After a lot of tears and prayer we believe we were.  Mike, and others in our support network, suggested that God's purpose in this may not have been for him to be a permanent part of our family.  That, perhaps, God's will for L in our life had been fulfilled.

We may never know.

But Mike has never prayed as fervently for and over someone as he did for L at the kitchen table that last night.

Please pray for L.  And for healing for all of us.