14

Matt and Jac0b against Emma and Heather

At the beginning of this year, I wrote a post talking about goals for the year. I mused that this might be the year we adopt. It was a far off hope when I wrote it. Little did I know in July we would meet our son.

Although I didn’t write it because it felt a bit premature, I internally hoped it may also be the year that my sister married Matt. They’d only been dating for about a month at the time, but I felt it was a good possibility with how things were progressing.

While I held hope for both of these things, I couldn’t have anticipated at the time that either would actually come to fruition by the end of the year.

How awesome has it been to see both of those come to life.

2014: The Year of Double Completion

God has been whispering this year to me that the two are tied together. I don’t think the timing of our adoption and Matt and Heather’s marriage is a happy accident. In fact, I believe our son Jac0b and my sister’s new husband Matt have a God-ordained bond, which we have yet to see even the beginnings of.

Seven is a significant number in Scripture. I can’t begin to tell you all the ways it is used, but suffice it to say that God specifically used the number 7 to show himself. The root actually has 3 meanings: seven, full/complete/perfection, and oath.

At times, God used multiples of 7 to have specific meaning. You might remember Jesus saying to forgive your enemy not 7 times, but 7 times 70 times. This is a reference to the 7th time Noah’s name was used when God described him as perfect. The word that was used to mean perfect was Thamim.  In Hebrew, words also have a numerical value.  Each symbol is a number and when the letters are added together, the resulting word also has a numerical value.  Thamim’s numerical value is 490, the product of 70 times 7.

You can actually see all the different multiples of 7 that are used in Scripture here. Sometimes it is to show his power, the cross, truth, the fullness of the Gentiles.

So, the original word and number have a specific meaning, but when multiplied, it has a different, but still significant meaning, particularly with the number 7.

I believe God has used 14 as a significant number, and multiple of 2 and 7, to show how He has worked in me and my sister’s lives through her husband and my son.

The number 2 is used to represent a union and 7 is perfection or completion. So, 14 implies a double measure of spiritual perfection, or indicates double completion.

Our family has prayed for years for these two people. I don’t find it accidental that in the year 2014 that they have come into our lives.  Our families are becoming more complete and we are giving legal oaths to these two people to make them family.

I mean, think about this, year 14 hasn’t happened for a whole century and won’t happen again for another whole century. It’s not like this could happen often. And what are the chances that at 34 my sister would get married after some matchmaking from a friend and after years of being in the system, we would be matched with our son all in the same year.  I would say we both have a heavenly matchmaker that wants it to be made known that he’s done it!

I have seen several other correlations between the adoption and their marriage, and specifically between Matt and Jac0b.

Scripture

On Friday at the wedding, the pastor closed out the wedding ceremony by sharing a verse that Matt and Heather picked out. It was a popular one from Joshua, As for me and me and my house, we will serve the Lord. I was able to share, in video, that night my toast to the couple. Now is the perfect time to start Learning to dive. I shared how they had traveled with Heather on her broken road, transformed her and now brought someone into her life to share it with.

Just 2 days later we sat in church this weekend and do you know what played on the screen? A video that Scott and I filmed about our adoption. Do you know what the sermon was about? Joshua. And do you know what verse the pastor closed his sermon with? As for me and my house we will serve the Lord.

Dates

Once I made these connections, I began thinking of other ways 14 played a part in this and then realized: Matt and Heather’s wedding was October 24th and exactly 14 days later we will be signing final adoption papers for Jac0b on November 7th, 90 days after Jac0b was placed with us on August 7th.

Names

It then hit me both Matt and Jac0b share Biblical first names that are linked. Jac0b—the father of the Israelites and Matthew, an apostle of Jesus.

In the gospel of Matthew, Matthew writes Jesus’s genealogy. There are 3 sets of 14 generations between Abraham and Joseph, including 2 Jac0bs.  The first, is the son of Isaac and the second is Jesus’s grandfather (who knew?).

Matt and Jac0b also share the exact same middle name Ryan. And do you know that the name Ryan means “little King” or “kingly?”

Uncle and Nephew

Now, hold on to your hats, people, because this final connection is crazy. I started seeing all these themes of 14 outside of the year 2014 and got super dorky. I really felt like there was a piece of this puzzle I was still missing so I went looking.

I started trying to find Hebrew words that had a numerical value of 14. Symbols in Hebrew can also be used to denote numbers, so you can add up the letters in the word and come up with a numerical value of the word. So, you could have a 10 + 4 = 14 or a 5 + 5 + 4 = 14, or I felt like in our case, the 7 + 7 = 14 would be more appropriate. A 7 in Hebrew is the letter Zayin and if you put two of those together you get זז, the numerical value of the word is 14 and it means “moving” (thank you, Google Translate). On one site I found, it actually has this expanded definition:

to boil; to warm or move (the heart); to love; and object of love, a beloved; a friend; uncle; nephew, pr.n. “David” = “Beloved”; boiler, pot, kettle; basket.

Oh my gosh, did you catch that? Moving love like in between uncle and nephew?? That’s what Matt and Jac0b are as of Friday.

And just to put it over the top, my name means beloved which is another definition of the same Hebrew word.

Are you kidding me?

 

God is so faithful to his people. If he never does another single thing, he has confirmed that He has moved, that he has blessed us, that he is with us. I know I can speak for our families to say as for us, we will serve the Lord.

I do believe, though, that there is something special between Matt and Jac0b. I have seen some inklings over the past months how they have already challenged each other. We have yet to see the extent to which this will go, but let me choose this day to say I see God moving and anxiously await his work.

 

Let this be an encouragement to you that God is in the details of your life right now.  Maybe he feels absent and uncaring.  But if we seek him and follow his ways and his direction, he absolutely will create beauty when we least expect it and in ways that will simply blow our minds.