SURRENDER IN ADOPTION

(Beautiful hydrangeas that arrived on my doorstep as a belated birthday gift!)

Without going into details that are not appropriate to share in such a public forum, I can say that we got some bad news on the adoption front yesterday afternoon.  I spoke with our lawyer and with the Grandmother and Grandfather of the boys (who have still not been born), and a lot is up in the air, to say the very least.  I still have no idea how this will turn out, which is certainly not a "fun" place to be.

Most of this time, I have done pretty well as far as stress goes.  I don't like the uncertainty of the situation, but I have mostly been along for the ride.  Last night, I got pretty angry about it all for the first time.

There are so many hard things in the world, and coming face to face with some of them is a real challenge.  When we started this whole adoption process, there are about a million reasons we chose to go the international route - and we still may end up going that way.  That is where we felt led, and we love Africa and would love to be more connected to that continent.  We felt like we had some of the resources it required, and honestly, we liked the predictability of it.  You get on a wait-list and wait for a referral that will usually come when your name is near the top of the list.  There are still a lot of hard things about international adoption as well - no adoption path is clean cut, but there is a straight-forwardness to it.

I would have to say quite honestly that one of the reasons we chose not to pursue domestic adoption in that first place is that it seemed a bit messier.  Having a birth family in our own country or state or county just sounded harder.  Right now, we are off any map I ever could have chosen for our adoption path.  This was not an option, but it became one, and we felt like it was a step of obedience to commit to this family.  We still feel that way, and we are committed to seeing this through and taking the steps as God puts them in front of us to possibly get these boys.

As it stands right now, I feel like God must be really enjoying watching me squirm.  I didn't pick this, and I wouldn't have picked it.  He did, and here we are.  It is challenging me to think differently about the ways that I qualify my obedience.  I am saddened by the level of selfishness I still find within myself when facing things that I cannot control or understand.  I want to obey and serve in ways that make sense to me, and God is turning that upside down, as only he could.

All I can do is surrender.  That's actually not true - I could fight it, pull out or choose misery.  But I can see that the only option that is honoring to God is to surrender and do whatever he has for us, without qualifying it to make sure it fits with my agenda.

So, here's to being off the map and working to surrender.  We certainly need God's help.