It has been a little over two months since I last sat down to write, and in some ways it feels as though an entire lifetime has passed in that short space of time.

There have been seasons when writing came easily to me, when I could sit down with a cup of tea and find the words without much effort. This has not been one of those seasons. The last several months have carried so much sorrow, so much change, so much uncertainty, and eventually so much unexpected blessing, that I found myself needing to live through it before I could begin to write about it.

Earlier this year, I lost my Daddy suddenly, and grief settled over me in a way I was not prepared for. There are certain losses that make the world feel different afterward, as though something permanent has shifted beneath your feet. For me, losing Daddy was one of those losses. At the same time, Dexter was carrying the weight of his own transplant trauma, and I came face-to-face with a difficult truth: there were some depths of grief that no other person could fully carry with me.

I had God.

And for a while, that had to be enough.

There is something humbling about reaching the end of your own emotional strength and realizing that you cannot fix what has happened, cannot reason your way out of sorrow, and cannot rush yourself through grief. You simply have to trust that God is still present in the middle of it.

That became the quiet lesson of this season for me.

I did not understand what God was doing. I only knew that I had to keep trusting Him.

Then, in the middle of one of the most painful seasons of my life, things began to change in ways I could never have anticipated. An enormous financial breakthrough came into our lives, one that almost overwhelmed us in its size and timing. Suddenly, doors opened that had been firmly closed before. We were able to purchase a beautiful new home closer to Atlanta, closer to the church we now love so dearly, and we were able to replace our vehicle as well.

For months, I had felt as though so much was being taken away. Then suddenly, there was provision.

It did not erase the grief. Blessing rarely works that way. One does not cancel out the other. I could be deeply thankful for what God was providing and still miss my Daddy terribly. I could walk through the rooms of a beautiful new home and still feel the ache of wishing he were here to see it.

That, I think, is one of the things we sometimes misunderstand about faith. We tend to imagine that a blessing must replace the sorrow in order to prove that God is good. But often His goodness meets us right in the middle of the sorrow. The tears do not always stop simply because something beautiful begins.

And beautiful things were beginning.

Just as we were trying to get settled into this new chapter of our lives, Dexter became seriously ill again and ended up back in the hospital in July, this time with chicken pox. Once again, hospital rooms interrupted our plans. Once again, there was uncertainty. Once again, I found myself praying and trusting God one day at a time.

And then, while Dexter was still in the hospital, the phone rang.

It was a call I had stopped expecting many years ago.

To understand why that phone call mattered so much, I have to take you back more than twenty years.

When Dexter and I were young, we wanted children. We prayed for them. We hoped for them. We waited for them. As the years passed and it did not happen, I heard Ecclesiastes 3:11 again and again from pastors who loved us and encouraged us:

“He hath made every thing beautiful in his time…”

I wanted to believe that verse with all my heart, but when you are longing for something that never seems to come, His time can feel painfully distant.

Eventually, in 2006, Dexter and I decided that perhaps our path to parenthood would look different than we had once imagined. We chose to pursue foster care and adoption.

We stepped forward believing that perhaps this was the door God intended to open.

But that door did not open either.

Over the years, we faced rejection after rejection. We were told no repeatedly. Eventually we were even told that what we hoped for simply was not going to happen.

And life moved forward.

Not because the longing had never existed, and not because it had not hurt, but because there comes a point when you have to surrender certain dreams to God and continue living the life He has placed before you.

Years passed.

Ministry grew. Dexter became critically ill. Our lives became filled with hospitals, treatments, surgeries, transplants, recovery, caregiving, and all the ordinary and extraordinary things that happen when twenty years pass by.

Eventually, the dream of fostering or adopting became something that belonged more to our past than our future.

Or so we thought.

That phone call in July came from the Georgia Department of Family and Children’s Services.

They had three very young children who needed a home.

Three little girls.

And they were asking us.

Twenty years after we first began pursuing foster care and adoption, the State of Georgia called us.

And we said yes.

Even writing those words now feels surreal.

Within days, our quiet lives became a whirlwind of preparation. We spent the next two weeks preparing bedrooms, buying beds and clothing, gathering car seats, arranging schedules, filling cabinets and closets, and trying to think of everything three small children might need when they arrived.

And then they came.

Suddenly, there were little voices echoing through our new home. There were tiny shoes by the door, cups on the table, preschool bags, bedtime routines, bath time, giggles, tears, questions, messes, toys, and more chaos than I could possibly describe in one blog post.

For the last four weeks, life has been both exhausting and beautiful.

There have been tears and laughter, sometimes within minutes of each other. There have been challenges, adjustments, appointments, routines to establish, and a tremendous amount of learning for all of us.

And in the midst of that, I lost my precious Tiffany after fourteen years.

Another loss.

Another goodbye.

Another reminder that life rarely gives us joy in neatly separated chapters from grief. Sometimes they arrive together.

And yet, today is a good day.

The children are beginning to settle into their routines. Preschool has helped tremendously. Our home is beginning to find a rhythm that did not exist a few weeks ago. We are learning one another. We are breathing a little easier.

And lately, I have been singing You Make Everything Beautiful by Rebecca St. James to Baby E.

The first few times, I did not think much about it. It was simply a song I loved and one that seemed fitting to sing to a little one.

Then one day, the meaning of it hit me.

Twenty-five years ago, pastors were reminding me that God makes everything beautiful in His time while I was crying over the fact that I could not have children of my own.

Twenty years ago, Dexter and I stepped into the foster and adoption process hoping perhaps that was how God would build our family.

And now, after all those years, I am standing in a house I never expected to own, rocking Baby E and singing about God making everything beautiful.

There are moments when God’s timing is so much larger than our own understanding that all we can do is stand in awe of it.

I keep thinking about the difference between “no” and “not yet.”

From where we stand, they can look exactly the same.

We cannot see twenty years down the road. We cannot see people who have not yet been born. We cannot see circumstances that have not yet unfolded or understand why one door must remain closed while another story is being written.

Had our prayer been answered in 2006, it could not have involved these three little girls.

They were not even here yet.

That thought alone has changed the way I look at so many unanswered prayers.

It does not mean that every prayer eventually receives the answer we hoped for. Faith is not a promise that if we simply wait long enough, every dream will come true exactly as we imagined it.

Sometimes God changes the answer.

Sometimes He changes us.

Sometimes a door truly does close.

But sometimes, what we call a closed door is a chapter whose ending we simply cannot see yet.

Ecclesiastes says,

“He hath made every thing beautiful in his time…”

Not my time.

Not Dexter’s time.

Not the timeline I would have chosen.

His time.

And perhaps that is what these last several months have taught me more than anything else.

God’s goodness does not always arrive in the form we expect, and it does not always arrive after the pain has ended.

Sometimes it arrives right in the middle of it.

Grief and gratitude can share the same table.

Loss and blessing can live under the same roof.

Tears and laughter can belong to the same season.

And somehow, God can be present in all of it.

Maybe that is why Psalm 34:8 feels especially meaningful to me now:

“O taste and see that the LORD is good…”

A cup of tea has to steep before its flavor fully develops.

For a while, it may appear that nothing is happening. The leaves simply sit beneath the surface while you wait.

But gradually the color deepens, the fragrance rises, and something that was once only hot water becomes something entirely different.

Perhaps there are seasons of our lives like that too.

Seasons when we cannot see what God is doing beneath the surface.

Seasons when the waiting feels pointless.

Seasons when we are convinced nothing is happening at all.

And then, sometimes years later, we look back and realize that the waiting was part of the story too.

So if you are sitting across the tea table from me today carrying an unanswered prayer, I cannot tell you how your story will end.

I cannot promise that your answer will look like mine.

But I can tell you what I have learned.

Do not mistake God’s silence for His absence.

Do not assume that because you cannot see what He is doing, He is doing nothing.

And do not be too quick to decide that a story is finished when God may still be writing it.

Twenty-five years ago, I was being reminded that God makes everything beautiful in His time.

Today, I am singing those words over Baby E.

And I finally understand them differently.

Some things take time.

Some things take surrender.

Some things take more years than we ever imagined.

And sometimes the cup placed in our hands today has been steeping for far longer than we ever knew.

This one took twenty years to brew.

Until next time, friend, put the kettle on.

We have a lot to talk about.

— Mandy ☕

---

If Tea Time with Mandy has encouraged you, made you smile, strengthened your faith, or simply given you a quiet place to pause for a few minutes, you can now leave a little “tip” through Buy Me a Coffee. ☕ Your support helps me continue writing, creating, and sharing these stories from the heart. There is never any obligation, of course, but if you feel led to pour a little something back into this ministry, every cup of coffee is deeply appreciated and helps keep the kettle warm for the next conversation. ❤️