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    God’s Got This: A Strategic Prayer Guide for Your Adoption Journey
    God’s Got This: A Strategic Prayer Guide for Your Adoption Journey
    God’s Got This: A Strategic Prayer Guide for Your Adoption Journey
    Ebook124 pages1 hour

    God’s Got This: A Strategic Prayer Guide for Your Adoption Journey

    By Jacqui Jackson

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    About this ebook

    When you decide to adopt, it's not if. It's when. You will need to figure out who your child is, what country you will adopt through, and how to share with your friends and family about your child-to-be.
    With candor, humor, and grace, Jacqui Jackson steps in as your Big Sister, helping you create a support team to walk with you through the parenting and adoption process. She provides practical tips for how to handle “The Wait.”
    Prayer is key. Jacqui, along with her husband Jeff, provide prayers and Scripture in this Christian prayer devotional for your child-to-be, a Dad’s perspective on adoption, along with strategic steps that will gently coach you closer to God.
    This parenting guide meshes personal anecdotes with Scriptural truths in an effort to resource anyone called into this adventure. One thing is for sure: If you have considered adoption and/or adoption and fostering, but you desperately want someone who has walked this road ahead of you to hold your hand through the process, then this is the adoption book for you.
    You don’t have to know all the answers; you just have to believe God’s Got This. He truly does.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJacqui Jackson
    Release dateJan 5, 2017
    ISBN9781370123421
    God’s Got This: A Strategic Prayer Guide for Your Adoption Journey
    Author

    Jacqui Jackson

    Jacqui Jackson is a former foster kid, an international adoptee from South America, and a grateful mommy to a tribe of heart babies and belly babies alike. Her passion for adoption and fostering stems from the legacy that God has given her to steward for His glory, and she is relentless about encouraging and equipping others to walk their own orphan care journeys. Her initial steps towards protecting vulnerable children began in college when she chose to champion at-risk kids as her platform issue while competing in the Miss America Organization. Jacqui used the scholarships earned during those years to attain a Masters in Education and to solidify her dedication to the cause of the Modern Orphan. Now a homeschooling momma, Jacqui has professional experience as a personal representative liaison for the Atlanta Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a grant writer for the Georgia Family Council, and a teacher who worked with students ranging from the pre-k to the college level. After becoming a first-time mommy through the gift of adoption, Jacqui knew she had found her heart’s desire, which was to be a mother to many along with being an orphan advocate. When she isn’t writing or promoting iHope, Jacqui spends her days chasing after the littles, Pinteresting fabulous domestic diva ideas to “try one day,” training for half marathons, and blogging about mommyhood at www.thegratefulmommy.com. She loves date nights with the Hubs because she can wear her seldom-used stilettos, the random game of sub-par tennis, and walking solo through the garden center at the Home Depot. When life has hit a new level of hot mess, you can find her doing “rapture practice” with her kids in the backyard or reaching for her hidden stash of Starburst jelly beans. Her favorite guilty pleasure is donning her amazing white jazz shoes and dancing alone in her living room with the stars on “So You Think You Can Dance.”

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      Book preview

      God’s Got This - Jacqui Jackson

      GOD'S GOT THIS:

      A Strategic Prayer Guide

      for Your Adoption Journey

      Jacqui Jackson, M.Ed.

      The Grateful Mommy

      Dedication

      To my Momma and Daddy—Your lasting legacy of faith, family, and forever-love over me, the Hubs, and all our Littles is such an example and a blessing. I cannot imagine my life without y'all. I pray this effort makes you proud, knowing that your obedience so many years ago changed the trajectory of each of our lives. I love you both more than I can ever say.

      To my Littles—Each of you has taught me something I could learn from no one else—faithfulness, prayerfulness, the need to play, and the importance of prioritizing snuggle time together. Y'all made me a momma—the heart dream of my life. I love each of you recklessly. I pray daily, and even hourly, with great joy over the trajectory of your lives, your choices, and those you choose to love. Each of you has such an incredible calling! I cannot wait to watch you walk into whatever God has prepared for you because He has big, wonderful plans, and they will be good!

      To Chachi—my gift from God. You are my prayer warrior, my best friend, my lover, and my life. You see in me so much more than I see in myself. I cannot even imagine where I would be if God had not gifted me with you. You are infinitely more obedient, prayerful, and stronger than I will ever be, and I am so grateful for your leadership in our home and your submission to our Savior. I love you forever and always.

      Love,

      Jacqui

      Contents

      Introduction

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Chapter Eighteen

      Appendix A: Language of Adoption

      Resources for Definitions

      Appendix B List of Chapter Hashtags

      About the Author

      Introduction

      So I wrote a book. No one asked me to write one. But the desire to pour out a part of my story to allow God to take it from test to testimony was relentless. However, even with that desire and knowing that God wanted me to do it, I did not embrace the journey of creating this book because I felt I didn't have anything worthy to say. But the Hubs, who is infinitely more prayerful and much better at listening to God, came to me when I was five months pregnant with my fourth child-to-be. The Hubs shared that God told him I needed to start writing again.

      I balked. I fretted. I flat out said no. My fearful, worried heart went into self-protective mode, as it often does when vulnerability is offered. God loves that about me, I'm sure. So then, to underline the calling, God gave me the gift of insomnia. For months on end, I would wake up about three in the morning and write for hours. It amazed me how the story flowed (I hope you agree!) and how Scripture just poured out. Truly, it wasn't a Jacqui thing at all; it was a God thing, for Scripture I hadn't read or studied in years would just come into my heart before being typed out on a page. Be blessed, friends, for it's taken me decades to embrace the current level of technology—this is the only thing I've ever written from the rough draft to the final version on a computer!

      After about nine months, more or less, I had birthed a book. So now what? It was unedited, unformatted, but it held my heart. The words on the pages that follow invite you to join me on a journey that grew me more than I imagined, saw me in some of my most broken moments, and prompted me to celebrate the greatest victories I have ever experienced this side of heaven: the journey of God building my family.

      I pray that by sharing a piece of my story you will be encouraged, challenged, and given fresh inspiration for trusting God to help you take one more step forward in yours. Walking out an adoption process is a journey. I have experienced this, for I have done it countless times along this mommy journey: personally, as an adoptee and as an adoptive sister, and then twice decades later as an adoptive momma. There were times on my journey when I hit a mountain that felt like more than I could scale, and I just wanted to sit down right there to cry and scream awhile. My mommy heart was so heavy with want and hope deferred.

      I so badly needed a friend who got it. I truly needed to know that others had successfully completed the often lengthy journey and had been given the most precious of gifts in the gift of a child. So whatever stage you are at in this journey, whether consideration (Yeah, go do it!), waiting (Oh, stay strong!), or bringing your new child home (Thank You, Lord!), I hope this blesses you. I get it. I get you. And I am praying alongside you right now.

      I'll share with you what my mommy mentor has told me countless times along my mommy journey: Don't worry, friend. God's got this! And He really does!

      Love,

      Jacqui Jackson, M.Ed.

      Blessed Wife and Grateful Mommy

      Chapter One

      Choosing Your Path

      Perhaps you have always known you were called to adoption. Maybe for you, like for me, toys like Cabbage Patch Dolls and Pound Puppies were more than a simple gift. Or perhaps you have come to this decision after years of wondering and wandering. However God has led you here, it is His clear leading. I want to encourage you with that first.

      Sometimes Jesus speaks to us in parables, and other times He is just clear and simple. Well, my friends, this is one of those times. In James 1:27, God clearly states, Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress... That, folks, is both a command and a commission. Add that to your total (okay, sometimes wavering) confidence. As crazy, difficult, or even surprising as others may find your calling, please remember that it is a heavenly, God-ordained invitation to join a joyous and, at times, overwhelming adventure.

      So strap in, pray hard, and get ready to go on the ride of your life. Welcome to your adoption journey.

      My Take:

      Being an adoptive mommy is a title I wear gratefully, but one I use sparingly. You might think this was my natural go to. But no, for me, it had to be supernatural. Facing an uphill infertility battle, I heard more than one doctor tell me that I had less than a two percent chance of conceiving and carrying. After leaving my teaching post at a Catholic school to pursue a last course of treatment, God let me hit my rock bottom. The nurse called and said the baby would not make it (again). Her advice to me was that the only next step was an expensive, invasive alternative, but I never felt called to walk that particular road. So where did that leave me? Sitting in Belmont, North Carolina, in a church parking lot, I simply wept. As I sobbed, I wondered how, if I knew I was to be a mother, I could have reached this point. So God intervened and drew near to me—His broken, bawling, hurting daughter—by using a sign. An actual sign, y'all! It was on the marquee of the old Baptist church in that small, southern town. It simply stated, Moses was a basket-case too. And I just froze.

      Wait! Moses, the man called and chosen by God, was a hot mess just like me. Then God leveled me. Moses was also the first child to be adopted in the Bible.

      During Biblical times, or, more specifically, Roman times, only adults were adopted. Their reasoning was logical: Why adopt a child who may stray to the right or left? It made sense to adopt an adult who had proven his or her character and made wise life decisions. In this way, you'd know who he or she was; this was safer than waiting to find out who he or she might become. The idea of adoption as we know it now was rare at best. However, Moses, the author of Genesis, the man chosen to free God's people, began life as a persecuted minority and was transracially and transculturally adopted by none other than the princess of Egypt! God used this supernatural relationship unequivocally in Moses' life to accomplish His will for His Chosen People—the Israelites. Now tell me adoption isn't God-ordained!

      I had hope in my heart and a total 180-degree reverse in my perspective. It was as if I had been hit by lightning! Wow, y’all! After enduring a full year of infertility testing, blood work, invasive procedures, and hormonal imbalances that could shame the sun, I finally realized that my own personal legacy could have led me there if I had simply reflected on the

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