On My Heart

I've been putting this post off for several weeks because the words that I feel I so desperately need to write are not pretty words or funny words or inspiring words.

The words I need to write and the feelings I need to get on paper are hard to articulate. I haven't quite been able to put my hand on the way I've been feeling lately, so let's go back to February for a minute, and I'll see where this goes.

February 12th, 2016, was the day our dossier was submitted to China. Four months and nine days ago, we became eligible to be matched with our baby boy.

Two weeks after our dossier was submitted, we spoke with our agency's Matching Coordinator who estimated our match to come within three months. Excitedly, I remember taking Carter and Kate to Hobby Lobby one afternoon in early March so we could start working on baby brother's room. We painted a shelf, picked out ocean and nautical trinkets, hung his initials on the wall, and we were just so certain that "the call" was coming any day.

And then we waited.

And then in late March, we got a call about a file with all sorts of inaccurate information, including the child's birthday, so the file was passed on to another family because this child was too old for us.

And we waited again.

April passed, May passed (the originally estimated "within three months" mark was in there, too), and now we are almost through June.

Every day, my children remind me of their baby brother. Every day, I walk past his empty room and look at his empty crib and wonder where he is. Every day, Kate reminds me that she's a big sister, and nearly every day, Carter finds a toy or a book or an outgrown piece of clothing that he wants to save for his brother. 

Today, he found a panda bear in Barnes & Noble. Excitedly, he ran over to me and thrust it into my arms. "Look, Mom! Look! A panda! Pandas live in China, and since that's where baby brother is, we should get it for him so he remembers where he came from! Can we get it for him, Mom? Can we?" I agreed, and it is now proudly displayed on his chalk-painted shelf.

Not ten minutes later in Gymboree, Kate comes running over to me with a size 3-6 month pair of footie pajamas covered in dinosaurs. "Yook, Mama!" she says. "Those are too little for you, sweetie," I reply. "No, for baby brudder!" she replies emphatically. Through gritted teeth and while holding back tears, I carefully tell her that we don't know her baby brother's size yet, so we won't be buying him pajamas today. "When will we know, Mommy?" she asks. "Soon, baby. Soon, I hope." 

It's all I can tell her as I watch her disappointment and the pit in my stomach forms.

Statistics will tell you that there are upwards of 500,000 children living in Chinese orphanages today.

And for the last four months and nine days, I've been asking God which one of them He has chosen to be ours. Where is our boy? What is he doing right now? Why are we still waiting when there are so many kids needing a home?

Here's the thing - by international adoption standards, four months and nine days of waiting is NOTHING. Truly, NOTHING. I have friends who waited over a year for their referrals from African countries, and I have know other waiting China families who have waited seven, nine, ten months already. I have friends who have adopted from countries in Central America who had to go see and then leave their children multiple times. Adoption is not for the faint of heart, and I knew that going in.

 BUT, I have felt particularly pained by our wait lately because an expectation was set and then not met, and that hurts. I don't know why we are still waiting. I don't know why God has asked us to live the last four months and nine days in complete and total limbo. I don't know when we will see our son's face for the first time or when we'll get to bring him home.

There are moments when I feel certain there's a reason we are waiting, and other moments, I'm just flat out heartbroken. I have moments where I so desperately miss our son...the son we've never met or seen...and other moments where I feel completely disconnected. There are moments, hours even, where I know this wait will all make sense one day, and other moments where I just want to throw my hands in the air and say, "It's just too much!"

And it's in those hard moments when I realize it's too much because I'm trying to rely on my worldly strength and endurance during this wait and not HIS. 

How many times in Scripture do we see God asking people to wait and trust? 

Think Noah got off that ark after just forty days? Nope! He spent a full YEAR on that boat with all those animals before God told him he could find land. (Side bar - can you even imagine that smell?!) I never met the guy, but I'm fairly certain he was OVER IT long before that. 

When Mary and Martha need Jesus to come heal their brother quickly and He doesn't get there before his death, they are heartbroken and angry. But Jesus showed His ultimate power in that the true miracle came LATER as Lazarus was raised from the dead. 

Moses waited 40 YEARS in the desert for God to transform him into the man who could deliver the Israelites from Egypt.

Our waiting is not new, and our waiting is not without purpose. It's in our waiting that God is working out all of these tiny little details that we cannot see from our finite viewpoint. It's in our waiting that He builds our anticipation for what's to come. And it's in our waiting that we learn to rely on and trust Him fully.

Habakkuk 2:2-3“Write the vision;make it plain on tablets,so he may run who reads it.3 For still the vision awaits its appointed time;it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it;    it will surely come; it will not delay.

Finding Joy in the Waiting...A Letter to Myself

I've written about waiting and trusting in God's timing before, but when I did, it was more directed at my readers and encouraging others.

Today, this post is for me.

I've been an absolute wreck the last few weeks, literally causing myself physical pain through my anxiety over our first delay in our adoption process. That one last document we need to finish authenticating at the Consulate...well, it's still there. What should be a four day turn around has been there for two weeks. It has made me literally crazy, and today, I'm done holding tightly to this stronghold of control. I'm giving it up. I'm letting go. 

(Cue Elsa on the snowy mountain.)

Here's the thing...at the end of the day, control is a facade. And that's hard for control freaks like me to understand. I walk around 95% of the time with a FALSE sense of control. At times, it becomes an idol for me. It is easier for me to white knuckle through life full of anxiety and tension and stress than it is to let go and trust that a bigger and much more qualified God is in control. 

And that is just plain silly, y'all.

What FREEDOM there is in letting go! The reality is that I am merely a steward of what He's given me. Time, health, money, family...these are all gifts that HE controls. My job is use these blessings to spread His kingdom. He never asks us to be in control...He asks us to trust.

My best friend Erica loves to remind me of my planner in college. Back when I thought life was so stressful (oh, how I'd love to go back and slap that college girl silly...you have no idea how good you have it right now, sorority girl!), I felt a need to control everything my literally scheduling every 15 minutes of my day. No lie. I scheduled "travel time" between classes, snack breaks, workouts, everything. I was the least spontaneous person you'd ever met, and I needed Lexapro just to cope with it all. 

Friends, this is not living.

So today, I'm going to find JOY in the season God is walking me through right now. Is it frustrating to know that the Consulate is basically holding our dossier hostage with that one paper? YES. Is it hard to wrestle with the fact that our dossier will go out two or three weeks later than anticipated due to this delay and the Chinese New Year? YES. But, God didn't ask me to understand why. He asks me to let go, to trust, and to live in the moment. And today, I'm choosing joy. I may not have a dossier in China today, but I have a wonderful workplace with incredible women where I get to spend my morning, and afternoon to spend with a dear friend, and a weekend of family fun ahead. And I am going to find JOY in the exact moment God has placed me.

And when that day comes that our dossier is done, we meet our son, and all of this is behind us? I have a feeling I will look back and realize that God is truly in the details of all this. He has a perfect plan for our family...delays and all. 

Happy Friday, friends! 

Oh, hey, December...

So, it's been a while. I was leaving a much needed girls' night tonight when a friend commented on how she loved reading my blog, and it dawned on me I hadn't posted a single thing this whole month. 

I'll give it to you straight. It's not you, it's me.

This whole working-mom-with-kids-in-school-during-the-holidays thing has absolutely kicked my tail. Christmas programs, pajama parties (why? why?), and every type of "exchange" you can possibly participate in have ruled us these last ten days. And there are still two more weeks until Christmas! Eeek! I was complaining chatting with a friend the other day about the craziness of this month, and she smiled at me and said, "Just wait until you have three!"

Ohhhhhh.

So, on that front, I haven't posted much lately because we are in one of many waiting periods. For those of you who read my little blog here primarily for the adoption journey, there will be lots of lulls. Long ones. Because there is a lot of waiting in adoption. Some of the waiting is due to things that are in our control, but the majority of the waiting is due to things that are totally outside of our control. Right now, we are waiting on our 797 (immigration) approval from the Department of Homeland Security. Great timing on our part, huh? I'm not sure our immigration approval is real high on their priority list at this point...because, you know, ISIS and all. Our agency says a typical approval takes roughly 90 days, but I'm not sure they took into account the whole global terrorism situation we are dealing with when sharing that estimate with me. I'm hopeful that we will get our approval by the end of January and get our dossier to China in February, but time will tell. 

 

People ask us constantly, "What is going on with your adoption?" It's hard to keep saying that we are simply waiting for more approvals, but that's the reality of adoption. It's just a long process with lots of i's to dot and t's to cross. Inter-country adoption takes even longer because there are two government entities that both have to approve the adoption, so, here we are, just waiting. The waiting is hard and frustrating at times, especially for a control freak like me, but it's refining at the same time. I'm learning to trust that God's timing is better than my own, and I am doing my best to enjoy the goodness of this holiday season with my two biological kiddos.

It's a strange thing that happens to your heart, though, when you know you have a child waiting for you on the other side of the world. There is a baby that I've never seen, never touched, and haven't named yet that will one day soon call me "mommy." It's hard to focus on the here and now with that kind of realization weighing on me. I find myself wondering what he's doing at various points in the day. Is he asleep? Is he crying? Is someone comforting him? Is he walking yet? How many hugs and kisses has he received today? 

Those unknowns are part of this process. Part of the waiting.

So, we wait. We pray that our child is covered in hugs and kisses and love every day, and we do our best to focus on Carter and Kate. As hard as it is to be present with so much going on, they need that. They deserve it. So, we load up for another trip to Hobby Lobby for, yes, another ornament exchange, we buy ANOTHER glittery reindeer, put another marker on the advent tree, and we continue to wait.

If you find yourself in a "waiting" period like us, I want to encourage you to focus on the present. Maybe you're waiting for that positive pregnancy test or waiting for your baby to finally outgrow the colic or waiting on that job offer that would better provide for your family. Whatever "waiting" period you find yourself in, just remember that you are in a season. And seasons change. The beauty of spring always breaks after a tough winter...but the winter is necessary. Hard, but necessary.

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven..." Ecc 3:1

That is December.