Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Quitting Adoption

Last month and what seems like every other day as of late, I've wanted to throw in the towel and quit our adoption process. The waiting is frustrating and long. The longing for what's to come, fades. Life keeps going while this calling we seem to have doesn't move.

I've told some that I expected to wait while our paperwork went to Ethiopia but I wasn't anticipating the wait for our homestudy. I guarded my heart towards bureaucracy in another land but not towards the happenings in America. It's no one's fault. Honestly, we haven't waited that long (4 months) but God has exposed much during this waiting time.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, our life is very full. I pity the fool who feels sorry for Martin and I for not having children. We know our life will change for the greater (or the different?) with them. Those who have known me for more than 10 years know children were my passion in my teens and twenties. Now of course, I sit at in an office every day with two giant computer screens in front of me. I've always wanted to be a wife and mom. But God has given us a very full life without children. So then why on earth are we adopting?

Adoption is so very messy. It's bringing tiny people into your world who know nothing of you or how you live and you knowing nothing of them. Those little ones do not know their life was lacking a mother and daddy just as we do not know what we're lacking not having them in our lives. They come with junk that you have to sift through, emotional and physical. Adoption is expensive. It's writing the same things over and over again on pieces of paper or online to strangers for grants. It exposes your financial history and current financial state. It allows people into your life that you never asked to in.

But.

Adoption to God is different. He adopted us as sons and daughters. He chose us. He sees us as beautiful. It's all because of what he sent his son down here to do. Nothing that I did ever could or would merit that love. He owes me nothing. He owes us nothing. And when God speaks of orphans he speaks of them as his. And if we're his hands and feet down here, then how can I look at adoption as anything else but doing the work of God? How can I get upset that things are taking longer than I think they should? How can I ever simply throw in the towel?

I hope you know I don't have a savior complex. I know I'm not this superhuman doing something extraordinary while others can marvel at my inner strength. I'm just a girl who willingly serves a King that demands everything of me.

We'll be asking many to walk side by side with us soon, as we send our papers over to Ethiopia. We'll be asking for money, cold. hard. cash. It's not because we need it, it's because we're all called to the cause of the orphan. And I'm not going to allow my friends and family to sit by and cheer us on. I'm going to ask that you guys come and get dirty with us. And also it's because I need people to pull me up when I fall down. And turn me around when I start walking the other way. And scream in my face when I simply quit trying.

Yes, adoption is super messy. But I'm willing to get a little dirty. Christ did it for me. He did it for us.

Here is a sermon a friend sent me. She knew just what I needed. And it wasn't a pat on the back. The sermon is an hour long. It's wonderful and worth every minute. Below the sermon is a video he shows in the middle of the sermon. That video is only 8 minutes long. Watch that if you don't have an hour on your hands (but find an hour at some point).