Art Auction to Bring Esty HOME!

When you have a daughter on the other side of the world that you cannot whisper truth into her ear, tuck her in at night or listen to her stories, your heart aches.
And you can't sleep at night.
And you wonder HOW will I bring her home??
And you remember that it's GOD'S THING, and that HE WILL DO IT.
But your mind still spins.
I recently painted a canvas for a gift. The very second the paintbrush hit the canvas my heart did a flip flop.
OH! This feels SOOOOO GOOD!
It has been a long eight years since I have picked up a paintbrush to paint. (And only a few weeks since I picked up a roller to paint the walls in Esty's room…but that's not what I mean!)
I painted this gift and the wheels began to turn.
What if I ordered a bunch of canvases and painted them…and sold them to bring Esty home? I floated the idea to my husband. 
He was tentative. How much time would this take? How much stress would it add to our lives? Would I even have time in the middle of Christmas, house changing over, raising our six kids and planning/packing for China?
Good questions. And the huge one in my heart of hearts: what if NO ONE WANTS THEM?????
He advised me to pray about it. To wait for an answer, and act accordingly.
So I did. I prayed. I waited. And the ideas began to come to me. I began to sleep with a pad of paper and pencil next to my bed. 
I finally go the go ahead from the Spirit that I needed to click "order" and have boxes of blank canvases shipped to my front door.
In an awesome provision, one of my best friends has not been able to sell her house. It is very close to our house and she offered it up as an "art studio" where I could go to create. This part of the equation has been INCREDIBLE. 
TRULY INCREDIBLE!!!
I have been able to go to a quiet space and pray and paint. And then, I have taken lots of little people over there in the mornings…sometimes up to FIVE of them…and somehow running around in circles in empty bedrooms entertains these crazy crumbcrunchers while I paint!! AMAZING!
So then, enter my sweet friend Chasity. She has done so much for our family in the past…and here she is wanting to run the auction! 
I began texting her snapshot of what I was painting…and admitting to her how SCARED SCARED SCARED I am to put these out there for others to see.

A Haitian Creole verse from Psalm 51

These are personal. These are ME. These are collaborations between Jesus and me…and I have no confidence that I could ever do it again. These are for Esty. To bring her HOME where she belongs.
Zeb asked me the other night why we were adopting her. I answered him with a question, "why did we adopt you?" He responded well, "because you loved me!" 
YES!
This is because I love Esty.
The images of the artwork are being loaded into an open Facebook group where people can bid on them. 
And I literally feel like I am standing naked for everyone to see and asking for you to bid on my soul.
This is THAT scary to me.
I think I'll probably just wrap gifts, bake Christmas cookies and sing LA-LA-LA the entire time of the auction and never look to see if there are any bids! 
Seriously, just writing about it I can feel my cheeks burning. 

I'm doing this for Esty. I'm doing this for Esty. I'm doing this for Esty. Okay, so here's the link where you can join the art auction: CLICK HERE. There are 20 total canvases for auction.  Well, 19. I have number 20 here, half done. But I still have today! ;)
The auction will begin 9 am CST and run through Monday 9 pm CST.
I humbly ask you to think of my girl waiting for TEN YEARS for a family and know that we are just 3-5 weeks away from meeting her and making her ours FOREVER!!
We are still short on finances, so if you would like to donate but do not really want any art, you can do that too at the bottom of this post.