Second Chances??

Let's be extremely honest. I have not blogged in a while -- a long while -- because I have been running away from things. Blogging - writing, really -- is one way I process stuff and therefore doing it would be facing the things I have been trying to avoid. So I have spent the last 2.4 months hiding from myself, my husband, and most especially my God.

This does not work out as well as you might expect.

What, exactly, have I been hiding from, you might ask? Adoption, I would have to answer. And no one would fault you for wondering what the heck I mean by hiding from something that all my previous writing would indicate that I have yearned for for several years. Why, then, when everything seemed in train to get the proverbial ball rolling, would I suddenly flee in the opposite direction as though pursued by rabid wolves?

Indeed.

In my arrogance, I thought I could step up and do this thing. I had a very "Go Big or Go Home" mentality. But when it came down to it, when an actual child was in front of us, when the question wasn't "will you adopt," but "will you adopt him?"  I did not "go big."  And part of what I've been hiding from is the realization that I am much, much weaker than I would like to admit and that as much as I would like to blithely tell everyone to "just trust God," I appear to have a long way to go in this department.

The other part of this shindig that I've run away from is God. Hiding always seems like a good idea when you are afraid you will be asked to do what you are not sure you can do. I did not want to see or hear from God, just in case He was a little too clear on what he wanted me to do.

Then there was my husband, who finally got on the bandwagon only to find a wife who quite literally lost it. That does a little number on your confidence, let me tell you, and doesn't exactly build up the confidence destroyer, either.

It all came to a head about 2 weeks ago. I had been hiding so efficiently that my husband didn't even know what was going on. For some odd reason, I got on the photolisting page of the agency we'd been working with and discovered that the little boy we'd been considering was gone. This meant he had probably been matched with someone else.  I should have felt relieved.

Instead, I felt annihilated. All the failure, the spiritual duplicity, the ugly facets of my personality that I had been trying to hard not to see, burst wide open on me and I knew, without a doubt, that I had failed God utterly. With all the clarity of hindsight, I looked back over the whole situation and saw a child whose medical needs were negligible at best, who was as close to perfect as we could ask for, and who I had rejected out of fear and a pathological need to control things in my life.

Epic fail.

The dam burst one evening and I sobbed to my husband all the crap I'd been holding inside, the failure, the knowledge of my own weakness and fear, the smallness of my faith,  I told him I felt like I'd failed a major test -- that God had called me and I turned away, indifferent to the plight of His children, consumed with my own selfish junk, afraid to step out in faith into what was patently not my comfort zone.

For I week I lived like this, bowed down under the weight of my failure. In the midst of this, I prayed for a second chance. I knew the child we'd been considering was lost to us, but I thought maybe in a few months we might find another child that we could commit to.  I wasn't terribly hopeful -- I just hoped God wouldn't give up on us, on me.

Then, a chance peek at the photo listing again and there he was -- our boy.  Back on the list for who knows what reason. A second chance?  It sure feels like it.

But now I can't get my husband to even consider it -- and this may be where the real damage lies. My sin may have submarined everything. This I know: God doesn't need us to carry out His purposes. But what  a privilege it would be if we could be part of them.

So here I am, in limbo again.