For Posterity

Last week was a week of struggle. I wrestled with some things that I needed to see about myself. Some ugly things that did not increase my self esteem.

My fear.

My obsessive need for security and control.

My lukewarm attitude toward God.

And of course, how connected these things are. A leads to B, which leads to C. I had to really face a crossroads: knowing these things about myself, was I going to continue on, giving God my leftovers, or was I going to step out and take a risk for God, do something that demanded a level of faith and trust that I wasn't at all sure I could handle?

Now, normally I cannot spout Bible verses, particularly when I need them, but last week God started throwing verses in my face. So many verses that I started writing them down because they were utterly relevant and I did not want to miss what God was saying to me.  Here's what they said:

"Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the Lord Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room for it." Malachi 3:10 (When was the last time you read Malachi? Right. Me too.)

"Blessed is the man

who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked

or stand in the way of sinners

or sit in the seat of mockers.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord,

and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water,

which yields its fruit in season

and whose leaf does not wither.

Whatever he does prospers."  Psalm 1:1-3

"Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins." James 4:17

"I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you." John 14:18

"Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it." Psalm 127

"If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?" 1 John 3:17

"I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord. "Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11

"Nothing is impossible with God." Luke 1:37

"The Lord will restore the years the locust has eaten" Joel 2:25 (this last one seems to have been specifically designed to counter my fears about coping with a child who has suffered so much loss)

The last piece of the puzzle for me was this blog entry by Shannan Martin, which absolutely laid bare my argument about "not having peace," -- which was really code for: scared to death and looking for an out. If God doesn't speak to us through fear, then all this brouhaha churning around in my soul has only two possible sources: me and my own frail humanity, or the enemy.  Take your pick. I am certainly flawed enough to be entirely at fault, and I am certainly weak enough to be vulnerable to attack. Drat my overactive imagination...my worst-case-scenario-extrapolate-to-doomsday mentality.

My feeling now is that we need to go forward until God stops us. Tonight, Tim and I will hammer this thing out and see if we can reach some kind of consensus. I see so many ways -- opportunities -- to trust God in this: for finances, for travel, for transitions, for parenting skills, for the growth and faith of our current children...it's all just out there, out of our control. If we do this, we will have to rely on Him, because it's totally beyond our experience and expertise to do any of this. We will be living out our trust in God in a visible, tangible way. I think there could be great power in this, for us and more importantly for our kids.

Not to mention the huge difference it would make for one small boy in Chin@.

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.

Gut Twister

After my prayer/letter/vent yesterday, I actually felt a certain calmness overtake me. For most of the day I felt okay -- lighter and even slightly happy. I also felt a rising confidence that we could actually pull this thing off.

Then, the email.

It was short -- an update that had recently come through, just translated, and it said essentially 2 things:  1. he is not interested in studying and 2. usually a steady temperament, but occasionally tantrums to the point of "convulsions."

I got cold all over.

The first part is just confusing. I know nothing of the expectations in a Chinese kindergarten. We are talking about a 4 year old, after all, and I have no clue whether this means he can't sit for 2 hours and copy characters or he would prefer to play, or what...?  I wouldn't expect many 4 year olds to "study." But my over-thinking brain immediately began throwing up alarming possibilities: ADD? Delay? Oppositional/Defiant Disorder? Impairment? (see? I am really good at this). WHAT COULD IT MEAN? I mean, really: what a weird thing to say about a 4 year old.

The second part was frankly disturbing. The agency said the translator says the word is not the one used for seizures. So I guess that's good, but they are going to try to get some clarification on that because even the translator wasn't sure what they meant. And certainly all kids have tantrums from time to time. But again, WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?  Everything up to this point said "quiet child, shy child, good learner, sweet disposition, etc." Now this. And of course, no context to help fill in details. Has he been removed from the foster family? Are the tantrums as a result of a major transition? Are violent tantrums something new?  Is there another trigger for this behavior?

All my peace, all my courage, blown to smithereens. Because the truth is, it could mean something, or it could mean nothing. And I am VERY uncomfortable with ambiguity. I like surety, accuracy, definitive statements, verified facts. 

Not much of that here. We're operating off about 8 minutes of video and one written report dated nearly 2 years ago. And of course, the update.  That's all we have on which to base our decision. My stomach has been in a knot since yesterday evening.

The truth is, I don't know how this will play out. And I am on tenterhooks. Undertake, Lord. Your servant is weak and I can't see my hand before my face. I need you, your insight, your assurance, your guidance. I really really really can't do this alone.

Intervene, Lord Jesus. Be a light in this situation so that we know what to do.

Wrestling, Part Deux

Irony: You pray about adopting a little person for literally years and when your husband finally comes around, gets so on-board with the idea that he is looking for a local instructor so he can learn Chinese to communicate with his new son, and you suddenly fall prey to a huge, paralyzing case of the I-Can'ts.

Oh yes. I did.  Please understand, God, that I don't like being this way. I hate this over-developed Fight-or-Flight response that I seem to have, the one that makes it almost impossible to sleep at night, the one that is giving me both heartburn and diarrhea (TMI? sorry.) The one that makes me feel like I can't quite breathe right and may break into a bout of hyperventilation at any moment. The one that has driven me to the treadmill every day for the last 9 days in a desperate attempt to simply exercise myself into some kind of Zen.

God, you know my heart is in the right place. I so want to do this, but ACTUALLY DOING IT is looming very huge right now. I can't even explain why I am suddenly wracked with fear.  Here, though, are some of the highlights:

Conflict.  I cringe in the face of conflict. Loud voices and unhappy people make me want to curl up in a ball. This is not my invariable response, but it is in my repertoire. God, I am most afraid of how our children will react.  I am most afraid of how our son will react since he is most likely the one getting a roommate and he can have an explosive temper and he is the one most like me -- not at all down with change. He is often deeply suspicious of anything different or new. As am I.

Change. Oh Lord, I fear change. If I sit down and lay it out I can sort of see how it would be overcomeable, but change of this magnitude frightens me. I can't form a picture in my head of how it will all be, once the ship has sailed. How will our family dynamic be altered? And you know, Lord, that this is not just an adoption thing. I went through this every time I discovered I was pregnant and every time I brought home a new baby. And some of those changes were cataclysmic. How I envied people who just gave birth and went right back to their normal lives with barely a hiccup. Why did/does it always have to be like an F5 tornado for me?  I am afraid of this blowing-apart of our family and the corresponding era of reconstruction which can (and has) taken upwards of a year to complete. I am afraid of being in flux for so long, of that devastating disequilibrium.

Conspicuousness. We are going to look different, this I know. Mostly I am okay with this, but I am having bizarre flashbacks to high school where I simultaneously and somewhat desperately wanted both the spotlight and complete invisibility. I am fearful of how I will handle the looks, the inevitable questions, the possibly-not-intentionally-rude comments.  I am somewhat fearful of how I will handle a child who has (as yet) no history with us. Those nights when I tell my children about their baby years will not include him -- I don't know anything about how he liked his first taste of baby food, or what silly things he might have done in the middle of a store, or how potty training went for him. What will I say? How can I help him be all right with that vacuum?

Lord, last night I felt you were talking to me through Ephesians. You spoke of reconciliation, of creating one heavenly family in the church, of breaking down walls that separate people. I so much want to move forward here, God. I want to be obedient. I want to be joyfully obedient. I badly need your peace, and with your peace, some courage. And joy too, Father, would not come amiss, but I will settle for peace and courage and be content to wait for joy.

And then there's this: "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go." Joshua 1:9

I do not want to suffer from depraved indifference. There's a little boy -- a baby, really -- in China who needs us. He needs a mama and a daddy. He needs people to pray for him, to bring him to Jesus, to train him up in the way he should go. Who will go, if not us? Lord I am claiming Joshua 1:9: be with us here. Be obviously with us here, because your servant is weak and small and fearful. Because I think you have designed this whole thing to underscore the fact that I cannot do this life alone, though I certainly act sometimes like I can. Well now, I totally can't and I am falling at your feet every day, every hour, to tell you I need courage, I need peace. I need you.

Amen.

Low

I am having another day where I just feel un-moored. Like a boat set adrift. I go through periods like this and I wonder -- what is it about my psychological makeup that predisposes me to sensations like this? I would so like to feel grounded, connected all the time.

It's not exactly depression. In fact, it's definitely not depression. It's just a feeling of ...of I don't know what. Emptiness? That doesn't quite describe it. Drifty-aimless-lack-of-purpose-shaky-oddness. With a dash of I've-lost-my-mojo thrown in for fun and a big spoonful of Nerves just to keep it all interesting.

If this were 100 years ago, I'd just say I had the vapors and go lie down.

And yet, lying down would feel like purgatory. Bleah. What IS it with me? It's not like I have nothing to do. Could it be the let down after the big project I just finished? I mean, as hard a slog as that was, it did give me tremendous focus for about 3 weeks. Focus and a big caffeine hangover.  Now it's gone and there is kind of a vacuum there.  And the change to daylight savings time always makes my brain wonky. So there we have it: a wonky vacuum.

And I wake up praying, "God, I'm such a failure. I have no big job for You, no huge purpose other than to feed my kids and keep my house clean and teach my little Sunday school class. And how often do I fail at those small tasks? A lot. I'm so sorry...so, so sorry."

And so it goes.

How do I just be? How can I just be in Him?  I have always struggled with this. Grace, as a concept, has always been more graspable as an abstract than in practice for me. Always I am looking for the bar, the target, the list of to-dos. I am a master list-executor, with my little pencils and my checkmarks. Show me the little ticky-boxy things and I am all over it. But this isn't a to-do. It's a be. And being is something harder to wrap my head around. The security, the rest, the peace-thing. It's deep.  You know, deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. And I am kind of shallow right now.

Part of my shallow, my lack of "be" right now is that everything frustrates me. Nothing is quite right, everything feels slightly skewed, and I am the only one who can see that the picture is tilted. The only one who hears the wrong notes. And here's what they're telling me -- "there should be MORE here." Something is MISSING. And that does seem to be something about DOING, rather than BEING. And it's certainly not something about having, because more stuff is totally not the answer.

What, God? What am I missing here?

Still

Have you ever wrestled with a problem. I mean really wrestled?

That's where I'm at. I am wrestling: twisting and turning, struggling to keep my shoulders off the mat, contorted into positions where it's hard to breathe, searching for that last ounce of grit from whatever place it lives inside me so I can flip this problem on its can, put both hands in the air and yell "YEAH!"

But that's the victory and I am not at the victory. Yet.

It feels like things are moving. All the hollowness I've felt for months, the conviction that it's not enough to acknowledge a problem, to say sincerely "That's a terrible thing," to shake our heads and turn away sorrowfully, all of that finally seems to be communicating itself to my husband. And not because I sat down with him and said, "look, this is all crap..."

Though I would certainly like to.

Yesterday we saw a clip from a sermon by Francis Chan and it was electrifying. Why? Because it's exactly what we seem to do in the church, and particularly it's what Tim and I have done in our family.




It opened my husband's eyes. He's not all the way there yet, but I think we're going down the right path.