I’m sitting alone in the living room of an apartment
somewhere in Eastern Europe.
How I got here I don’t know.
Well, of course I know HOW I got here—I took plane ride after plane
ride, tried to sleep, tried to eat, repeat.
But I really don’t know how I got here.
It’s been a long ride, this journey of adoption. And I know I write that as if I’m on the
other side of it, as if it’s over already which it’s not. But in many ways, my journey has been as much
about ending as it is beginning. My
heart aches this morning for a sweet little orphan boy in a remote region of
Russia. If I close my eyes I can still
see Davis’ smile and feel his arms around me as he hugged my neck so, so
tightly. I can feel my hands rub over
his freshly shaved hair and see his sweet eyes twinkle while we sang and
laughed and I snapped photos of him. He
is alive in me. And so it is quite ironic
and heartbreaking that I am in another country waiting anxiously to receive a referral for
a different child that I hope to make my son.
I am as eager as I am fearful.
My heart is again open and laid bare, and again, able to be
crushed. But FAITH.
Faith is a very strong and undeniable thing. The day before I got on all of those planes,
I laid in bed with my only daughter and we talked about faith. How can you go even when you are afraid? Faith.
How can you still love when you’re heart has been broken? Faith.
How can you still risk when all seems lost? Faith.
How can you continue on when it would be so much easier to stay
put? Faith--faith the size of a mustard
seed at times. But that’s all it
takes. You don’t have to be sure or
certain but you must have a teensy tiny amount of faith. Faith is what propels us forward and gives us
courage. Faith is that glimmer of hope
when everything else says, “Impossible!”
Faith will revive you, grab you by the hand and get you on that plane.
I sit here on this sofa surrounded by unfamiliar sounds and
smells, my stomach rumbling and my head racing, already longing for my own bed
and my children back at home. Yet I know
that this right here, right now, is the stuff of life. My discomfort and rumbling stomach are merely
signs of my physical sacrifice. Adoption
is a process of sacrifice. I am
sacrificing my comfy life, my comfy normal, my comfy bank account for the good
of another human being. And it’s
nothing. Truly, when I think about what
Christ did for me, for all of us, what I’m doing is nothing. But it’s something, right?! I have to believe that this fight I’m living
is for something. Even the fight I lived
for Davis is for something. Because God
is with me here in this apartment, fighting along side with us. God is with Jude in his orphanage, preparing
his heart to meet us. God is with Davis,
sustaining him, with my children who miss us, my parents who are working so
hard to take care of them for us, with you even as you read this. He is working in each of us.
I truly believe that there is so much Good Work being done
all the time that we couldn’t possibly begin to understand the enormity of it
all. Our lives are intertwined and
overlapping and our stories each contain threads that are woven into this
great, beautiful tapestry that we can’t humanly comprehend. Those things we claim to be ironic, coincidental, those times we say "what a small world!"...all part of the tapestry.
I just woke John up and explained the dos and don’t of
taking a shower in the bathroom here.
He’s yawning and unimpressed.
Doesn’t he realize that I’ve spent the morning wrestling my anxieties and writing all these deep thoughts? Nope. He isn't interested. But he does say to me, “I hope Cindy’s alarm went off on time.” Cindy is a woman we met yesterday that was
boarding a train at 6:00 this morning to go rescue two orphans. She is a woman with a story as long, as
twisting, as full of disappointments and heartache as anyone, but her grit and
her resolve impressed us both. She has
an enviable relationship with God. And I
imagine that He knew exactly what He was doing when our plane showed up two
hours late and we shared a driver from the airport into the city. It was no accident that she shared her story
of losing a little girl from Russia during the ban and how she came to the
crossroads of adoption yet again. It
most certainly wasn’t a mistake that we went to dinner together and walked her back to her apartment. Three strangers
in a strange new city, yet last night, the world felt smaller, together. Cindy is a part of our story now. She was a gift to us, a gift of reassurance
and hope and friendship. I pray that the
Lord will bless her tomorrow as she heads to court for the parental rights of
two special needs orphans who desperately need her. Lord, be with all of them.
Our DAP appointment is in an hour. We expect it to be short, just a few minutes,
as we receive our referral for Jude, the very first step here towards making
him our son. We expect our driver soon so I’m off to find clean socks and
unpack my boots. The day awaits.
