Getting Away...

As I sit here this morning, it's becoming more and more clear to me that we are leaving this Sunday night to go on our first long family vacation by ourselves. We will land in Orlando, stay a couple nights there and hang out with my sister and brother-in-law and their baby and then head down to Ft. Lauderdale for a couple of days. We will be visiting our adoption agency while we are in Ft. Lauderdale. We will then head over to Anna Maria Island near Sarasota for the remainder of our trip which will be filled with fishing, swimming, trolly rides to the pancake place and icecream stops.... Oh and the game Sorry for probably every night that we are there! There will also be much praying as we hope to have a final answer on what country we'd like to adopt from; We've been considering Congo and Columbia. The recordings of our songs were recently put up on Itunes, so make sure to check those out! You can find them either on our adoption facebook page Emwood or Itunes under Emwood and then the song title. I had been really wanting to write two different songs for a while. The song idea was about the gospel and what has been done on our behalf. That we were dead in our sin, an enemy of God appointed to His wrath BUT GOD rich in His mercy came and died for us. (Ephesians 2:1-10, my favorite passage in scripture right now) The other song idea was about adoption. Adoption had been heavily on my heart for 2 years and I wanted to express it through a song. The song Finally Home was written a year ago last March. Eric and I were up in Bangor, ME visiting some loved ones and one day the words "Finally Home" hit me like a ton of bricks. The concept that traveled with these words was that we were Finally Home in Jesus. Our identity has been permanently changed and we have been adopted into the family of God through Christ. Also with that was the concept that one day, the Lord would bring our children finally home to us. Little did I know, we'd write a song in the next 10 minutes that portrayed it all! Thank You Lord for blessing us with that song! The other song on Itunes, Unconditional, was written 10 1/2 years ago while Eric, my husband, was away on an internship in California. We were getting married in about 2 months and I really wanted to write him a song of vows. I had been trying for months and months and months, yet nothing came. Finally, I sat down on the piano with my basic skills and again, in 10 minutes a song came out. I was able to get a hold of our producer at the time and ask him to record it for me. He so graciously did and on December 29th, 2001 Eric and I lit our unity candle to that song. So, there you have it... the history of those songs. Hope you are blessed, encouraged, spurred on by them. Please continue to pray with us as we seek clarity in the days ahead of bringing our beloveds finally home!