During the summer as we completed our home study, we also decided to list our house for sale. We had been blessed with being able to build our house about 2 years before. However, this house never felt like home. I will say...it was a nice house. Other people would come over and tell us how much they loved our house and how fortunate we were. I may sound spoiled here, but it was nice, it just wasn't home. No matter what I tried to do to make it feel like home, it just felt like a house. So the decision to sell it wasn't to hard to make. Our thinking was that if we could sell our home, we would make a little profit off of it, and use that profit to pay for our adoption. Oh, how God must have laughed at all the ways I had figured out to do his work!
After we were wait listed I would like to say we waited very well. However, life still happens while you are waiting. I am not sure if every waiting family is like this but we tried to just live life as normal as possible. Yet, every moment of every day I had this constant awareness of the possibility that we could get a phone call or an email that would change our life forever. I would daily, sometimes hour by hour, remind myself to appreciate the two amazing little boys I had right in front of me. I remember so many prayers we prayed that God would help us to not live life for later, or wish away the blessings he had given us for right now. We did try so hard to enjoy every day, but still, a part of my heart was searching for our new addition.
We did try to use the waiting time to learn anything and everything we could about adoption. We read books, watched podcast, movies, read magazines and blogs, went to seminars and conferences. Anything we could do to learn and prepare. I think it was good for me, because it made me feel like I was doing something.
Well in the midst of waiting, educating, parenting, and cleaning our house for showings, life happened. About a month and a half after we got wait listed, our extended family entered into one of the darkest valleys we could have ever imagined entering. Day to day life was uncertain. Life was suffocating and hard. The ground we were walking was not one ever envisioned to be in our family. This upheaval in our family impacted Adam, myself and our kids in ways we did not for sure how to deal with. All we could do was depend on God.
Adam and I spent hours upon hours, mornings, and nights and often into sleepless nights, not knowing what else to do but pray. We cried out to God for our family. We didn't know what else to do. We questioned him and found comfort in him.
In early October we were weary. In fact, I would say weary was an understatement. I was done. I remember a particular weekend that I just had this sense of defeat. I entered into a weekend long pity party. I was probably a little angry at God. I remember telling him, I needed some control back. I felt like I had lost any and all sense of control in our lives. That was not easy for me.
On Sunday morning before church I walked out and found Adam praying next to the fireplace in our living room. I told him that I was not sure about adoption any more, maybe we should call tomorrow and take our names off the wait list. I needed some control back in my life. I couldn't control my extended families circumstances, we had showings at our house sometimes 2-3 times a week, and I wanted a baby but had relinquished that to our adoption plan. I remember telling Adam, lets just be done and try to get pregnant on our own. Adam sat there by the fireplace and said, "lets pray." He then went on to pray to our God who hears. He told God where we were and how we were feeling. He also recalled in his prayer how God had affirmed our adoption choice so many times in the past few months but here we were, weary and broken. He told God, "Lord, we need to hear clearly from you. We do not want to disobey you. But we are loosing the strength to continue, and we need some guidance from you. Lord, let us hear from you today." We then preceded to go to church.
I sat in the church pew that morning broken. Our worship pastor started to lead worship. After 2 songs into worship he said, " I would like to introduce a new song to you today." He went on to explain who had written the song and then said, "this song is about adoption." He explained that the song was about the beautiful way that God has adopted each of us through Jesus Christ. He then read Ephesians 1:3-6
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved."
He went on then to teach us a beautiful song about adoption. As we, okay, as the people around me sang,
(I was a crying mess in my pew) I worshiped our Lord who had indeed adopted me, by his grace. I also could not stop the aching in my heart for our child who would soon be adopted into our family. I was reminded of why we started down the journey of adoption in the first place. This is why, not because of us, but because of Christ.
Following worship our Pastor got up and shared a message from Mark. During the message he said, "if you have been given a calling from God, you do not have permission to bail just because of the storms you may encounter in life."
Adam and I walked out of church shaking that day. We sat in the car and I looked at Adam and said, "do you think anyone else got anything from church today? Or was just for us?" As we drove home we quickly came to the conclusion that we did not have permission to bail. These storms were an opportunity for us to depend on God in a new way. I remember the exact spot we were at when I said, "it is a moment like this, that I will look back on and someday if our child ever questions why we adopted him/her and challenges us if we were meant to or not, that I will say, we were inches from bailing, but God stopped us."
I lived on the encouragement from that day, through many rocky weeks ahead. That moment, when the God of the universe reminded me that he is in control, I don't have to be. The God who is my perfect father. My redeemer who has by his grace adopted me. This is why we adopt. In my heart of hearts, it is the only way I can love as he loves.
