4/28/12

Chronic Ache

   It builds up over time, the inexpressible ache, the isolating preoccupation.   The longing, that if spoken of, would only confuse those around me.

This transparent journal is the place I attempt to form this crazy roller coaster into concrete words.  We are in the active process of two different adoptions.  The vulnerability I feel with both is immense.

The world around me questions our decisions.  They judge our lack of 'good sense'.  With raised eye brows,  accusing questions, or even sometimes more hurtful...silence.

I don't expect anything from anyone else, this is between us, our children, and our Father who sets the lonely in families.  This has NOTHING to do with getting attention, good karma, cosmic brownie points, or gaining favor.   The reason we're so open about our experiences is to bring God the glory , and to challenge others to follow their Savior with reckless abandon to the death of their own comfort, convenience, or worldly common sense.  It's not to make ourselves showcase trophies.   On the contrary, if anything, it's to prove that God specializes in using ordinary  repenting sinners...who struggle to pay the bills,  who snap at their kids,  who get impatient, grumpy, and lose focus too easily.  He uses us, in spite of ourselves not because we're something special.  It's not our light we're shining, it's His.

Tomorrow we have another home study meeting for our Chinese adoption, this one discussing our motives for adoption and reviewing our "range of acceptance"....not that we haven't already given great consideration and hours of research, prayer and discussion to the topic. It's been a process, over the last couple months, of allowing the Holy Spirit to strip away our fears, to convict us of our self preservation, and to open our hearts and home to "special needs" that not too many years ago I would have prayed fervently against our home ever being touched with.

Our Dossier is almost complete and ready to send away.  I find myself in a chronic state of trying (unsuccessfully) not to imagine the child that will become ours,  because the longing, the ache, and the impatience is too uncomfortably sanctifying.  Trying to control my fierce maternal passion is exhausting.   It is forcing me to dig deeper, to trust more completely, and to lay aside my own desire for control.   I go between railing against it, to succumbing to the refining process and thanking him for breaking me a little more.

I know our Father's purposes cannot be frustrated by human inefficiency or derailed by demonic powers that seek to destroy the weak.  Throughout history, from the front page of creation to the return of the risen King his purposes stand...despite our sin, in spite of our weakness, in the midst of opposing powers and principalities....His rescue mission to call out his own has not changed.   There is nothing that we will face, that has not already been through the filter of his love.  There is nothing that comes against us that he has not allowed.  We can rest in that truth with so much joy and peace.  We know he is good.  He is just.  He is merciful. Even if we can't always see the road ahead.   Even if that road doesn't lead where we think it should go.




"If there's any part of my shaking heart
to see this journey through.
It must be You."

"If we are out of our mind,
It is for the sake of God...
..For Christ's love compels us.
2 Corinthians 5:13, 14







1 comment:

Marcy Payne said...

I ache with you. I know your momma's heart just wants all your chicks in your nest safe and sound without any threats to their stability or safety. The waiting is such a difficult phase of this journey. To have that doubled with both adoptions in the waiting stages would be monumental! Praying for you right now.