First, lately I feel like just maybe I am getting a hold of this whole motherhood thing. I went through a season where I felt like I was really bad at it, pretty much every day. Lately though I have mastered things like food shopping and dog walking with out another fully grown person around. It's not that I couldn't do it before, I just couldn't do it with out getting all tense in my back and sometimes even sweating. I can take my girl out alone with confidence. It was little but it made me feel better about how this whole motherhood adventure was going. I also just keep falling more in love as I watch my peanut begin to verbally communicate and I watch her ability to recognize and name things.
Secondly, I have been praying for myself a lot recently. Normally it would sound something like this, Lord thank you for my many blessings, grant me patience to make it through the day. Lately, it sounds more like this, I am here God I am listening, help me to hear your call, your will. This is usually in reference to ordination but not limited to. Show me the way Lord, is a popular refrain as we prepare for a move so I can attend seminary. I don't know if I can Lord, but I hear you and I am following. I am here willing to follow this call but I don't see how I am paying for it so show me how. The list goes on and on, mostly all move related.
Then, somehow in the middle of all this moving, job hunting, party planning fiasco a new prayer just came out of me. You have laid adoption on my heart Lord, let me pay attention and not grasp too hard. These words just kind of came out of my pen as I was writing in my prayer journal. Woah! You laid it on my heart? I don't even say things like that. It's true though lately I have been thinking more and more about adopting children. I am not sure it is a coincidence that while this was there on my heart, I accidentally happened upon three separate blogs and organizations that deal with adoption and/or orphans. There is a blog I read that has a link to a Christian Orphan organization of some sort, that happens to be having a conference in, Louisville. I clicked around the site a bit. Then I was searching for party ideas for a birthday party I was hired to plan. I found some pictures on a blog that chronicles an adoption in a post about a first birthday party. This morning as I went to blog that is part of a Lenten Blog Tour that I have been sort of following when I remember to, it was by an author who adopted her fourth child and is releasing a book about it this summer.
So all I can say really is OK God I hear you. I have always thought about adoption. It seems though that it is catching my attention and maybe I am just one of those crazy religious ladies or maybe I am in tune with God working in my life, but I feel so strongly that God is in this. It is hard to describe the strong feeling you get when you feel something is of God. I am not sure I can find the words. It's a movement in the heart more than anything.
I have to ask though, why now Lord? What are you preparing my heart for? I am here getting ready for seminary to start in just a few short months. I am prayerfully considering the ordination process again, even though it proved to be so disappointing and painful last time. I really thought/think this is where I am supposed to be. What is up with the adoption curve ball that has come out of no where? Maybe it wasn't no where. Maybe it just that my baby certainly, undoubtedly is a toddler and there is that weird mom thing that happens when your baby isn't a baby anymore. Usually you want to have another baby, not me, I get adoption brain.
Instead of trying to find a hundred ways in which to write off what I am feeling, thinking, praying... I think I am going to try really hard to just sit with it, notice it, love it, hate it, live it but not act on it or get it in a death grip.
We aren't ready to adopt right now, the mere mention of it to Paul and he changed color. He came out with statements like we can't afford it or how will we do it? I am OK with that for two reasons, the first is that my dear Paul is always overwhelmed by the big picture, so much so that he shuts down in ways and fails to see the many tiny pictures that make up the bigger picture. That is until I shove just a tiny picture in front of him. Secondly, I should say clearly thought that Paul is with me when we put it like this, adopting one day. We have always talked about it, it has always been on the table and it will stay there. He wants more kids, that is for sure.
Out there in the world in some place we don't know, our future son or daughter could be waiting for us. Or they will be one day. That thought is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once. Remember though that sweet Mirembe taught me how deep love flows from and in these veins.
Lastly, we prayed long and hard for our little Lilia Grace and that prayer evolved into a prayer that sounded like this, we are open to your will Lord, we will love a child no matter how they come to us. We had to surrender to God and then we had our little miracle. NOTE: I don't think surrender is a guarantee of the results you desire, it is a posture that allows you to accept any result no matter how heart breaking or overwhelmingly joyous. It taught us a lot. When God's time was right we held our baby girl. This leads me to this conclusion, when God's time is right we will have more children, adopted or biological. We really have learned to trust God in that way, matters of having children. Now if only we could do it with everything else.
Today I am grateful for the God nudge.
May you be blessed by noticing God some where you didn't before.
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