My husband came home for lunch yesterday and we had a lovely hour where we could talk without having to listen for short people torturing each other in the other room. Nobody had to push back from the conversation saying, "Those kids are gonna fry!" No one put her head in her hands and said "Please tell me we are not raising axe murderers. Or republicans."
It was so quiet, we were almost nervous.
After we got the small talk out of the way ("Hey, I lost the dog for 20 minutes today!") we sat down to discuss the whole adoption thing. I have to say, that compared to my expectations of this conversation, it came off a lot better than I had hoped. And let me be clear here, I wasn't hoping for much. In fact, I was dreading whatever answer my husband came up with, because a 'yes' would be profoundly scary and a 'no' would feel like an epic fail.
Instead, my husband started talking about something they discussed in his bible study this week -- namely, whether you're going to choose to live the Christ-life, or the Self-life. Without getting overly complicated, it boils down to this: are we going to choose to depend on God for what we need, or are we going to depend on ourselves? Will we choose a path that allows us to see His blessings, or will we choose a path that allows us to pat ourselves on the back for being so forward-thinking that we planned for every eventuality thankyouverymuch. Because when we're busy taking care of all our needs, God is prevented from blessing us the way He wants to. But if we step out in faith, not really knowing how we're going to pull this off, we've set the stage for God to show up big time. And that raises a second point: Do we believe that He will, indeed, show up? Do we believe that He is master of the details, in charge of the outcomes, already ahead of us with whatever we need to accomplish His purposes? How much, really, do we trust Him?
Tim's take on it was this: God already knows what decision we'll make. The decision does not, in fact, affect whether we're saved, but it may represent a choice of either Him or Self. No matter what we choose, He has already made provision for everything we need. We can continue to live the Self life and we will still go to heaven, but the ultimate goal of the Christ life is to kill the Self life -- KILL IT DEAD. So if we say no, are we saying no because we don't trust God enough, because ultimately we don't believe He can come through in the clinch? Because while he might provide us with the funds to do this thing up front, the long term stuff is beyond Him? This isn't really a case of putting your money where your mouth is, but more of a case of laying your life on the line. Adopting a child is forever and ever, world without end, amen. This is not a one-and-done deal, but rather a relationship that is going to be there for the rest of our lives, both with that child and with the One who may be sending us on this journey.
So, my Spiritual Leader says (and let me just say here that I am forever saying "you need to be the Spiritual Leader" so then when he actually leads I'm all "What? That's how you're leading? Are you sure that's right? Do you reeeeaaaalllllyy know what you're doing? Do it this way...") we need to pray that God makes it clear that this is what he wants. We need to Gideon this thing. I am not sure how this is to be accomplished, but that's Tim's take on it. And honestly, it would be nice to get some Go-Do-This-Or-Be-Watching-For-The-Lightning-Bolt confirmation.
Can I just say that I have trust issues? I am a huge committment-phobe on many many levels, most of them completely shallow (like furniture -- I can barely bring myself to buy furniture because the prospect of making a decision is very daunting and I do not roll with mistakes well at all. At. All. So instead, I live with half-furnished and even empty rooms, or I live with furniture I hate -- furniture I am actually plotting to kill -- for literally years because making a decision is just too much committment on my part. Life would be great if I could just date my furniture instead of marrying it.). I wasn't always like this, but as I've gotten older, I am frequently overwhelmed with the "if only" complex and its sister, the "what if" complex. As in, "if only we hadn't bought this house, our old neighbors wouldn't have died" (This actually happened, and I still think the two are related. And I am still occasionally blindsided by a lot of guilt about it.) or "what if we buy the car and then something happens to the house and we don't have the money to fix it because we spent it all on the car?" So this kind of thinking totally paralyzes me like a woodchuck in the middle of the road with a semi bearing down on it. I cannot move for fear of making some sort of unfixable mistake, for fear of being the cause of great misery. Instead, I become the author of great indecision. The Mighty Waffle, as it were.
This whole prospect of laying it on God is completely alien to me. And I have been a Christ follower since I was 12, so quite a long time; I thought I knew how to lay things on Him. But this feels different, like I'm approaching a new level, a different level that I've never quite been to before. Maybe all these years I've been at level C, and God wants me to move up to level B. Problem is, I want to scope out Level B first so I can see what's up. Then maybe just ease into the whole Level B experience a little bit at a time, like getting into a really cold pool. I am not a plunger, I'm a toes-feet-ankles-calves, etc. girl.
Tim says not to get mired down in details until we make a decision. This is not the time to even entertain thoughts about how we'll tell our families, how we'll put all these kids through college (Lottery!), how we'd even approach the whole adoption process -- this is just the time to ask ourselves which life we're going to live and find a way to "lay out a fleece" so we can see what God wants. Once we know what He wants, He'll have to step up and smooth the way for all the rest of it.
My spiritual leader is leading. I am in awe, and I am a little scared.
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