I’ve always liked that term.  Can’t say I’ve ever been good at it.  I tend to want to fill the silence.  Never-the-less, it’s fun to say.

This week’s celebration of marriage turned into a great adventure.  Thursday morning marked 21 years since the day I met the man of my dreams and 16 years since we promised to love each other for life.  The only anniversaries that we have been able to celebrate together were 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 14 and this year (17’s not looking so good).  Spending so many of them apart prompts us to go all out when we actually get to be together.  This desire completely conflicts with our plan to be debt free this year and to pay all the adoption expenses up front.  This is where the adventure came in.

I blogged a few months ago about our plans to sell our vehicles and use the equity to pay cash for replacements.  Well, we sold our 2004 Honda Odyssey more than a month ago and we have been looking, but have had no luck finding something that would seat 6 and was reliable for the $3000 that we made off the van.  Chad found out about government auction vehicles last year from the Duggar’s website and he has felt since then that we were supposed to buy a vehicle at one of these auctions.  There haven’t been any in our area for quite some time though.  Last Monday we found that one was scheduled in Fredericksburg (about half an hour south of us) on our anniversary.  That same day we checked on Chad’s Hilton Honors club points that he has been accumulating for years from all of his Army travel.  We used the points to book a room at the Capital Hilton in DC (I HIGHLY recommend it) and he still had enough to give us a $100 credit at the hotel spa.

So, we had reservations (completely paid for) at a 5-star hotel about 20 minutes north of us and the opportunity to buy a car at an auction half an hour south.  We made arrangements to get all the kids off to school and headed south at about 7:30am.  On the drive down, we thanked God for providing us with a free place to celebrate our anniversary and asked him to give us the vehicle that we needed.  By 10, we had a car.  We’re hooked!  We never never never ever want to buy a car again any other way.  It was such a blast!  We got our tax return that morning also and we had decided to take $1000 from it so that we would have a total of $4000 to purchase something reliable (we weren’t having an luck with ‘reliable’ in the $3000 range).  We put asterisks next to a few vehicles that we scoped out before-hand, but they all went for more than $4000.  A 2005 Kia Sedona EX pulled up.  It was immaculate and loaded and in about 45 seconds, we got it for $4100 and we were both standing there scratching our heads and wondering what had just happened.  We found a local DMV, called and added it to our insurance and got tags.  It’s not fancy (well actually, it kind of is), but it’s paid for.  We plan to pay ourselves a $400 a month car payment every month for the next 10 months and then trade up. Never in my life did I think I would be this excited about a Kia mini-van!

We returned from our get-away on Friday afternoon with just enough time to pack up the remainder of our dossier and get it to the FedEx shop before the last pick-up.

Out of our hands…..and into God’s.

We wait.

Psalm 25:4-5 Show me Your ways, O Lord; teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me: for You are the God of my salvation; on You do I wait all day.

This is our pregnant pause.