Disaster ... blessing!

I am now, FINALLY, a father of five! My wife and I adopted our foster daughter a few weeks back and then last Saturday we took her to the temple to have her sealed to us for eternity! It's amazing how things in life work out, sometimes and most importantly when you don't plan them. My wife and I were talking the other day how some of the greatest blessings in life come in the aftermath of disaster. A few examples from our life:

• We had to sell our old home in order to be in escrow to purchase a new home. The one we wanted fell through (stupid lottery), so we were stuck in escrow with no place to go ... then ... home. We found our wonderful home that fits our family and which we love so much. Disaster ... blessing!
• Our oldest son was being horribly bullied in his elementary school, so we elected to pull him out and home school him for a while.  Eventually, we enrolled him in a local charter school, and moved our other 2 children there, too.  It was a complete disaster -- no traditional teaching, unsafe environment, and our kids fell further behind in school (my daughter is still struggling with the math she didn't learn when she should have there ...).  We pulled the two youngest out right away and returned them to the original elementary school, but left our oldest son there, hoping things would get better.  They didn't, but they did bump him up a grade and because the charter school was in a different school district than the other elementary school, he was able to be put at the top of the waiting list for a different junior high/high charter school that we had heard good things about.  He soon got accepted, and the difference in the schools was night and day.  He finally had a place where he was being challenged, where no bullying was tolerated, and where he could fit in.  The new school has proven to exceed all our greatest hopes and is perfect for our family -- my daughter now attends there, too; and because they are there, the younger children were able to get into a new, affiliated charter elementary school.  Disaster ... blessing!
• We tried for 2 years to get pregnant, only to have our happy pregnancy end in a horrible miscarriage.  After that, we tried for 4 (!) more years, with no success, secretly fearing that we were never going to have children again ... then ... adoption.  We fostered two children that complete our family and have recently adopted them and taken them to the temple to be sealed to our family for eternity.  Disaster ... blessing!

Through these experiences, we've learned to always be patient and to wait for the blessing that follows disaster, because, in our experience, they always come.  It is, of course, hard to see them on the horizon when our vision is clouded by the struggles of the day.  Even so, we press on!  (What else would we do?)