Giving it Up

Yesterday Heather, who has been waiting over 16 months since referral for her two Ethiopian children to come home, put up an amazing post on her blog. It really resonated in my heart and I've been thinking about it a lot since I read it--probably because I've experienced that too.

If we're lucky, there seems to come a point in the "waiting game" where you are able to give it up. Give up the illusion of control that you tried to hold on so tightly to at the beginning of the journey. Give up the stern "My child WILL definitely come home within X time frame!" mentality. Give up the hope that if at least you aren't in control, your agency is. This all sounds very sad, but it's not. It's a great source of relief--when you're giving it up to someone else...when you're giving it up to God.

Although the wait for Taevy's homecoming was NOTHING compared to the wait we're going to have for Bright (4 months from referral to homecoming) it was the most difficult 4 months of my life. We accepted her referral during a moratorium on adoptions in Cambodia. There were rumors that the rules would change and we could lose her referral all together. And of course, as a first time parent I mourned every day I wasn't with her experiencing her in all of her "baby-ness." We thought she would come home at 2-3 months old and she was instead 6 months old (still so young I see now, but not then). Anyway, every day of that 4 months wait was excruciatingly painful. It was the not knowing if she would ever come home that was so painful.

There came a point in that difficult 4 months where a transition occurred in my heart. Actually, I have my mother-in-law to thank. I was crying to her about our situation and telling her how I had faith that it would all work out and she interrupted me to say, "No Anita! If you had faith you wouldn't be crying about this right now. You'd have peace in your knowledge that the Lord has this all under control." It hit me like a ton of bricks. She was right. For some reason, at that point I was able to do what I hadn't been able to do the previous 3 months. I gave it ALL to the Lord. And when I did I found peace. I suddenly knew that even if Taevy never came home to us it would STILL be okay. I knew that even if she was 3 years old when she came home to us it would STILL be okay. Because I was in my Lord's hands. The whole situation was.

I've been bothered the past couple of days by the lack of posts about our adoption, and specifically about Bright this month. If you scroll down most of the posts are about other things, other issues (great and small). I've been asking myself, "Why don't you need to write big sobby posts about how much you miss Bright right now? What's wrong with you?"

Well, it occurs to me that I may have just come back to the place of peace that I found at the end of the wait for Taevy's homecoming. I don't find myself worrying about Bright. I feel about as good as one can feel about his care situation. I don't feel the need to worry about the possible future medical/developmental issues either--God's got that all under control. And there is no longer any illusion of control with regard to the adoption process itself. I have no power. My agency has no power. And I know that whomever holds the earthly power is really at the mercy of my God anyway, so why worry?

Now, I'm sure that there will come more times during this wait when I am impatient and discouraged. I'm sure I will shed more tears at the thought of all of the missed months with my Bright. But for right now, for today, and hopefully for a long while longer, I am not having a problem "giving it up."

Love,
Anita