Full Heart.....Full Home: Russia on my heart...

You all know (all zero of you!) the ups and downs I've had lately with fears of providing for our future children etc. You've heard my hearts openness to adoption vs natural children, etc. Lately I haven't really heard much from God on the matter. Could be I wasn't listening and letting fear overtake me. Could be that God just isn't saying anything because it's not His timing yet. I do know that I shouldn't take God for granted and shouldn't brush things off too easily and dismiss them to quickly as being "not God" just because it's something I don't want.
Last week I felt like something had stolen my joy. After receiving prayer at church about it I feel so much better. I look forward and see so much purpose and am so excited about God's plans for me. I know they are far greater than my expectations. I may really want to be a stay at home mom, but that really might not be God's best for me...might be..might not be. I won't know until he reveals that to us. My job is to be obedient to what he asks of me. If he asks me to sacrifice much financially to stay at home and live paycheck to paycheck...then I have to do it. If he asks me to work part time and drop our child off at daycare, vs friends house, vs grandmas...I have to do it if it's what he asks of me. What has given me so much peace is knowing that God will always equip me for whatever he is going to bring on my path. I probably won't know what I am supposed to do financially until after we are pregnant or he reveals we are to adopt...I might, but probably not. I have to trust that he will take care of it. I must be obedient to him and he will take care of it!
Anyways....that was just getting you up to speed on somethings going on in my heart this past week. Which brings me to today. I haven't heard much about God lately with our future family in mind, but after realizing all of the above info (that I have to be obedient to God and his plan regardless of whether it was mine or not) I realized that I must trust him with his timing. I asked him for strength to be obedient and to reveal to us in his timing his plan for our family and that regardless of whether I had answers for Dave's job etc...that if he said start a family that we would be obedient to that. Today at work one of the girls mentioned a missionary from Russia coming and speaking about orphanages that he ministers in there. She invited Dave and I to come. At first I started to play it off, being kind and saying thanks for the offer and that I would have to see what I had going on...fully intending to probably not go but just being polite but then a moment later my mind just stopped.....Russia. Russian adoption...Russia? Dave's family has had Russia on their hearts for years. Dave's dad has even gone there for missions and Dave himself even went once. I have no idea if this was a God thing or not, but it made me stop and think about it long enough to tell Dave about it tonight. Even if it's nothing I can't just ignore it without praying on it. I haven't really had a point in this process of praying that I really felt God calling us to a specific country, or to something domestic. I'm still not even sure if he is calling us to adoption...but something in my heart aches. When I think about these children sometimes my heart just aches...I cry. Tears of longing.
As I thought about Russia tonight I remembered that the Pastor of the church Dave and I attended in college had adopted children from Russia. I searched for him on facebook and found him with one of the boys he adopted from Russia and my heart just melted...tears streamed down my face as I read the caption underneath the photo....

"Me and Gabe the day he asked if he could come home with me."