What these shoes are REALLY going to do

(PLEASE read to the end - the best story is last :-).  As many of you know, we are now completely ensconced in used shoes.  They are on our porches, in our cars, on our driveway - everywhere we turn there are smelly, old, dirty, getting-rid of shoes.  But EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. feels like love to me.  I knew when I read about this fundraiser that it was going to be awesome (hopefully not in the way that I KNEW that the ladies night out roller skating with our church was going to be awesome - I am still shocked that hardly anyone wanted to go, and it permanently bruised my confidence in knowing what people want, but anyway...).  Thankfully, I WAS right, and it has far exceeded even my very optimistic expectations.  We have gotten LOTS of shoes.  And hope to keep getting more as long as we have this storage space!!

Obviously I know that there are shoes out there that people don't want anymore - everyone has at least a few pairs in their closet.  It doesn't seem surprising that they would bring their unwanted shoes to us.  What I was totally unprepared for was how excited everyone would be to help us - really, really help us.  Folks we don't know that well (or even know at all!) are telling their friends about us, sharing it on Facebook, putting boxes on their porches for collecting, gathering up shoes from their gyms, their clubs, their workplaces, their schools.  People are setting up collection boxes, handing out flyers, giving out bags, spreading the news everywhere they go.  In their eagerness to help, it almost feels like they are getting something FROM us rather than giving something TO us.  It has completely blown my mind and brought me to tears more times than I would like to admit.  If you want some beautiful examples of how people have loved us, just ask me the next time you see me - I literally have new ones every day.

What I wanted to talk about for a few minutes was something that a sweet friend said to me the other day.  I was at a local church dropping off a collection box.  A woman I don't know super well (I teach her kids tennis) had contacted her church to see if they could put a box in their hallway. The church agreed, and now also has put up flyers on their bulletin board and included us in their weekly email and their newsletter. (SEE??? This is what I am talking about.)  Anyway, I dropped by to put up the box, and a group that had been meeting there was just finishing up.  (As an aside, two friends that were there who had no idea I would be there saw me and said - Oh, I have shoes for you!! - and ran out to their cars to get them. SEE????).  I stopped to chat to this sweet friend who I don't get to see very often but has been so kind and supportive all along during this process.  We were talking about the whole shoe thing, since she saw me putting up the box, and she said that as she saw all the ways that God was providing for us to bring Sergey here, she thought "Wow.  I can't even imagine what God has in mind for Sergey.  He must have great plans for him."

Now it is a bit awkward to admit this, but I don't think I've really spent much time thinking about Sergey's future.  I am so fixated on the present - the fundraising, the paperwork, etc, that I just can't even imagine what it will be like when he is here. Or if I do think of that, I think in terms of how fun it will be to take him to soccer camp next summer and introduce him as my son, and bring him home each night knowing that he will not be leaving again. What I don't really think about much is what the rest of his life is going to look like.  Obviously we do not know what God holds in store for any of us, even tomorrow, or even in the next hour, so trying to figure out what Sergey's future will look like is not productive.  However, thinking that God has such great plans for Sergey that He would do so much for us to get him here - to bring us tons and tons of shoes, to place in the hearts of folks the desire to help us in this way, to allow so many people to fall in love with this boy for reasons they don't even know - that is mind-blowing (and caused me to cry the entire way home, which, by the way, I have decided is not such a safe way to drive).

God is about setting the lonely in families, about loving orphans and widows, about caring for the least of these.  But to think that He has great things for THIS one boy, this sweet soul who is going to be part of our family in just a matter of months - that almost takes my breath away.  I am not saying that I know he will necessarily do great things in the way people normally think of great things (amazing doctor, famous lawyer, brilliant surgeon, world-changing politician), but in the exact way that God has planned for him.  To think that no one else besides our Sergey can do what God wants done - that He is bringing Sergey to us to glorify Himself, not just to save him from an orphanage or life on the streets in Ukraine, is almost more than I can handle.  It is so humbling, encouraging, amazing, breath-taking, to think that our family gets to take part in plans that originate in heaven.  To know that we will get to watch as the future unfolds for this young man - no words.  Grateful that you all will be there watching with us. :-).

OK, PS.  You know I couldn't end without telling you at least one more story. As I was typing this up my phone rang with a number I didn't know.  It was a woman who got our flyer through Harry's travel lacrosse team.  We have never met her and her son isn't even actually even on the team yet - they are in the middle of tryouts.  And her son is in high school, so he and Harry would never even play together anyway.  She went to a yard sale that her son's school was having and asked for all of the shoes that were not sold, bagged them up, and has them to bring to me. THEN she tells me that she told her Bible study about us on Wednesday and that they all wanted to participate.  She asked me to send her an electronic copy of the flyer, so she could send it out to her friends.  I just now flipped over to check my email and she has already sent something out to the 50 ladies in her Bible study group, a beautiful email full of truth from the Bible and the details of our fundraiser, with the flyer attached.  So now there are 50 more people who have heard of Sergey, might be praying for him, might meet him one day.

OK one more.  As we were unpacking the shoes tonight, several of the bags had these cute pink flyers attached (see below).  I read one, and saw what a friend of a friend had done (a woman I have still never met, we just recently became friends on Facebook through a mutual friend).  She brought over tons of bags yesterday, from this drive that they did at her school - a bunch of 4th grade girls apparently called the "Giggles Girls" got together and gathered up shoes for us.  People we don't even know.  For us. For Sergey.

OK one more.  Then I'll stop - I promise.  Our dear friend told her family in Ohio about our fund.  Her aunt drove her car ALL THE WAY FROM OHIO completely jam packed with shoes, hundreds and hundreds of them.  Her little seat where she drove was like a little pocket, and everything else was jammed.  They pulled up as we were bagging shoes tonight (I had no idea they were coming), and I got to hug her and try desperately to keep from sobbing.  She mentioned in passing that she didn't have a lot of air as she was driving - and considering that is was about 100 degrees today I just can't believe that. A woman I have never met drove so far to love a boy she's never met, with a car full of love from Ohio.  How is that possible.