Where I'm at today

So here are three amazing things that have happened already today . . .

1.  A friend sent me a message on facebook asking how the adoption process is going.  Simple, but so good.  Our adoption is on my mind a million times a day, but it is nice to know that we aren't the only ones who remember, pray, and anticipate our little man coming home.

2.  We got invited to a dinner on Saturday night to celebrate Ethiopian Christmas!  Our friends, the Palmers, brought their son home from Ethiopia in 2011 and this will be Anna's first try at making Ethiopian food.  Thankfully she said she wouldn't be offended if we needed to make a McDonald's run for the kids . . . and Chad. :)  What a blessing to be able to start weaving Ethiopian traditions into our life.

3.  Our friends, Owen and Amanda Nease, are on their way to NOLA with their newborn daughter, Emery, that they just adopted in Texas!  God used our prayers for the Neases to speak to us about our own adoption and it has been such a joy to walk beside them during their adoption journey.

Exciting, right? 

But as amazing as these things are, my heart has been so heavy today.  I didn't really understand why until Chad came home from lunch and I ended up a puddle of tears in his arms.  I realized how these amazing things were weighing on me.

**Disclaimer**  I'm about to confess the feelings of my heart.  I am fully aware that they come from a focus on self . . . my plan and my timing.  Be gracious . . . because thankfully that is the character of the God I've already poured my heart out to.

1.  Like I said, I love that people ask how we are doing, where we are in the process, etc.  But today as my friend asked if we would have Easton home in 2012, I had to painfully type that the timeline is now 24 to 36 months of waiting, which means it will most likely be 2013 or even 2014 before I bring my son home.  Talk about a knife in the heart.  This is a long road, y'all, and we are just at the beginning.  I so bad want to "wait well" but I admit that I have to take a deep breath as I consider what is ahead.

2.  I'm so excited about celebrating Ethiopian Christmas with friends, but I must confess that I'm a little nervous about keeping my emotions in check as I watch the Palmer's precious boy run around . . . all the while aching to experience that with my son.  I want to be fully here, in the now, but I find it hard to do when part of my heart and mind are on a country and a little boy across the ocean.

3.  I am 100% overjoyed that the Neases are coming home with their baby girl today.  But I also can't deny the jealousy or envy, I guess, that I feel.  Not like I want it happening to me instead of them, but that they are at this point in their journey and it will be years before we get to experience the joy of this day in our own journey.  *Remember, be gracious . . . I'm being gut level honest here.*

So there it is . . . blah.  Believe me, I'm not enjoying this heaviness, this focus on the negative, the fact that my emotions are operating according to what happens to MY plan or hope.

So I had a good cry with Chad and it helped just let out the tension inside. (Seriously . . . how did I get such an amazing husband?  I could never deserve him.  I just thank God for His gift.)

Than Chad reminded me of what Joseph said in Gen. 50:26, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." 

Joseph is a man that knows about waiting.  Waiting in circumstances far worse than my own.  But at the end of it all, he saw God's purposes and PERFECT plan.  A plan which included the saving of many lives.

So while I don't think that people in the adoption process intend it for harm, I know that Satan sure does.  He is an enemy of the Gospel and is therefore an enemy of adoption, which beautifully declares the Gospel.

So I could just be really mad at Satan or really bitter about the process taking so long . . . or I could trust God, the same God that was sovereign over Joseph and used his horrible circumstances to save lives.

Chad helped me put it in perspective.  What if, two years from now, when we feel like we've been waiting for an eternity and it is becoming ever-increasingly hard to wait well . . . what if then God uses our story to speak to another family about adopting . . . saving the life of a little one somewhere.  That opportunity to be a part of saving more lives than just our Easton might not happen if this adoption went MY way . . . having him home yesterday! :)

So if you were disappointed as you read my yucky, selfish feelings . . . sorry, I'm real.  But know that the Word and Chad brought me back to trusting God's sovereignty . . . for now.  :)  I have a feeling that I'll be going through this more times than I'd like in the next few years.

If you want to pray . . . pray for trust, pray that we would wait well, but it wouldn't hurt to pray that the process would pick up the pace a bit!  There are hundreds of families waiting to make an orphan a part of their forever family!