Barren and Blessed

Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for my soul. I cried to him with my mouth, and high praise was on my tongue. If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. But truly God has listened; he has attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me! - Psalm 66:16-20 2 days later, a text at 4:30am from our caseworker: "Zachary is here!" We had previously been to an ultrasound appointment where we got to hear his heartbeat. His birthmother was gracious enough to allow us to name him. And now it was time to actually meet him, face to face. We had a 2 hour drive ahead of us, which was both too little and too much time. Extra excitement. Extra nerves. I remember literally nothing from our drive to the hospital. It's a black hole that only God knows what I thought about or talked about with my husband. I imagine we prayed a whole bunch. We chec...

When you don't know what to do, do the thing in front of you. Sometimes life is so hard you can only do the next thing. Whatever that is, just do the next thing. God will meet you there. - Elisabeth Elliot After we got home from the trip of our second adoption match failure, we just carried on, by God's grace. We did the next thing. We prayed. We went to work. We submitted our profile for more potential adoption situations. We prayed. We cleaned and did laundry. We went on dates. We worshiped. We prayed some more. Life went on. We fixed our eyes on Christ and continued to serve God where we were. And strangely I felt mostly peace, right when I didn't think that was possible. It was a peace that surpassed all understanding. Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.   Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand;   do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your reques...

Search Me, O God, and Know My Heart To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. 139 O Lord, you have searched me and known me! 2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. 3 You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. 4 Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. 5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. 7 Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! 9 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” 12 even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light wi...

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.  - 2 Peter 3:9 I'm going to switch gears a little bit for this post because I want to highlight a contrast in emotions and to show how making use of God's grace and trusting him in all circumstances played out for me. Faith can absolutely be shaken to its foundations, but true faith is kept by God himself and He will never let it fail.  At the time of our second adoption match, I wrote an email to a friend of mine, whom I had been supporting through infertility struggles using my own experiences.  This is the email I wrote to her at that time: "We were matched in mid October and are expecting to meet our daughter when she's born next week! The birth mother and father are amazing people. We have talked to them on the phone, emailed back and forth, and just met them last week. And her family is very suppo...

For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. - 2 Timothy 1:7 Fearful, frustrated, useless, hopeful, impatient, comfortable, courageous, brave, scared, anxious, selfless, compassionate, desperate, convicted, selfish, generous, thankful, renewed, worried, insecure, distracted, useful, guilty, sad, tired, excited, depressed, lonely, secure, confident, peaceful, overwhelmed. This post contains all these emotions, and more.  Our adoption saga goes on as our emotions are tossed to and fro like the waves of the sea. I still needed to learn to use God's spirit of power to exercise self-control over my emotions. I didn't really get the full lesson here, not yet, but if you've read our whole story thus far you might notice certain patterns repeating themselves. They often do in life. The trick is remembering the spirit God has placed in me and exercising it. After our first match fell through and then waiting a few more years, we decided to start worki...

I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the  Lord  in the land of the living! Wait for the  Lord ; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the  Lord ! - Psalm 27:13-14 And then we waited. And waited. And waited. We got our clearances and fingerprints and physicals renewed every year. We changed different aspects of our profile a few times as we learned and understood more about the process, especially about the openness of adoption that is the current trend. We grew and changed a lot since first starting the adoption process. But we were still just waiting. And honestly it was very, very frustrating. It's difficult, and complicated, and expensive, and takes so much time. Why? Don't we always hear about the mass amounts of kids needing families? And about the opiate crisis flooding hospitals with addicted newborns that need a good home? We're a good home! Why is this taking so long?? I don't know, but it's frustrating. The average adoption wait ...

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; ...a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; ...a time to seek, and a time to lose; ...a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace. ...He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live. - Ecclesiastes 3:1-12 (selection) Time really does help. When the emotions and wounds are no longer fresh, it lends more clarity to a situation. It wasn't as difficult or painful as I thought it would be writing about our infertility struggles. But I also do want to continue to share where this journey has taken us. Because that chapter did end (in a way). The label, the experience, the struggle...