exposed

This blog originally started out to be for updates about our adoption process, but has turned out to be my safe haven where I run to sit quietly and reflect on what God is teaching me, or vent about what I am going through.  It is truly a gift for me.  I say this because the following blog will probably not hit home with many of you.  It is for me.  It is simply because today was hard and I needed to do this.

The process of adoption has a way of stripping you down to the most vulnerable parts of yourself.  The whole world is invited in to a decision that is private for most people.  You are forced to share things like your personal finances and physical health with people who you barely know.  They dig into your life, why you want to be parents, your ability to parent, at a depth that is  uncomfortable at best.   You make the decision to adopt and with it comes a world that unless you have done it before is so foreign.  There is a language you don't know and a process that you are swept along in. 

Then you begin to share the news with others.  You find the strength to say "we are adopting" when people ask if you have kids. Then you hold your breath and wait for their response.   If I am honest, there have been many times I have wanted to cry on the spot.  People willingly, and most of the time uninvited, share their opinions freely.  " Why would you want to do that?  Don't you want your own kids?  You must not be able to have your own children. I am so sorry.  How much will your children cost? "  Most of the time I simply nod, smile, collect the pieces and walk away.  I share my brokenness with Dave and with people who love and support me.  I realize that most things people say  are not meant to hurt, but they leave me feeling raw and exposed.

Today I sat across from my social worker and poured my heart out.  Waiting is so painful and with every successful adoption my agency notifies me about I am not so gently reminded that we were not picked.  I asked if our profile had been shown, not really wanting to hear the answer. She sat across from me today and said we have shown your profile many times, but it hasn't been picked.  We don't know why.  We have to rely on the belief that it simply wasn't in God's timing.

The whisper of why don't people want us poured into my mind.   It is such a personal thing for someone to look through the book of your life and then decide that they do not want you.  I haven't had many times in my life that I have had to face rejection, but I can firmly say that this is by far the hardest to accept.  It is putting everything you are out there for people and then being told that for whatever reason they do not want you.

Our social worker listened, encouraged, prayed, and was everything she was meant to be for me today, but she could not take away the pain of the rejections and the waiting that has no end at this point.  I sat in my car after lunch and flipped on my ipod and turned to the song that has been the cry of my heart for the past few weeks.  The soft words filled my car and I let myself get lost in them.   "I'm running to your arms, I'm running to your arms.  The riches of your love will always be enough.  Nothing compares to your embrace.  Light of the world forever reign. "

I took all of the pain and doubt and ran into the open arms of my savior.  I could almost physically feel myself running from the reality of this world, and running with reckless abandon in to my father's arms.  I threw my arms open and flung myself into his arms of comfort and love.  I drank in his acceptance and love for me.  To him I am enough, I am known from the inside out, and I am loved with a love that is beyond my ability to express.  He chooses me, he loves me, and he knows me fully.  His plan is hidden for now, but I believe that it is good.  I swallowed up his acceptance, love, grace, and comfort.  It is one of the first times that I have not allowed pain to separate me from God or to drive a wedge between me and faith in his good plan.  It was tasting sweet in the midst of the bitter. 

I am thankful for the newness of a hang-on-at-any-cost faith.  It allowed me to experience the comfort of a God who is there in the midst of my circumstances to catch me as I run head long into his arms.  I am resting in the shadow of his wings.  I am so thankful to be fully known, exposed, before my God who loves me.

Deuteronomy 33:27 (New Living Translation)


" The eternal God is your refuge, and his everlasting arms are under you. He drives out the enemy before you;  he cries out, ‘Destroy them!’"