Delights and Shadows

“For us there is only the trying. The rest is none of our business.”

T.S.Eliot somehow manages once more to send a zinger straight into my heart. This is where I have lived for so long – wrestling with God over why He would not grant success to our plans when, from what we can see, our plans are good and faithful and motivated by love. I am beginning to see and trying to accept that it’s not my job to establish the Kingdom. But it is my job to try.

Which is why I am getting on a plane tomorrow, with the goal in mind of bringing home a baby boy. He is due in a few days. His mother is waiting to meet us. All seems just as it should be.

“Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’’ I have no idea what lies ahead of me when I land in Ft. Lauderdale. I don’t know what God has planned. All I know is that we have done our best to ensure this little boy will belong to us. We are trying. The rest is none of our business.

Thankfully the One whose business it is is also my Father and Savior and sustains me with His righteous right hand. I can walk into the dark because He is the One who bears me up.

My sister reminds me sometimes that the fulfillment of our desire to adopt does not rest on the birthmoms or lawyers or social workers. It feels like it, but it doesn’t. And, of course, what she’s telling me is that I can have the supreme confidence of trusting that my future is in the hands of a good God. Sometimes that isn’t comforting.

Sometimes I feel the niggling, cold, deathlike grip of Doubt. It’s a terrible guest to have lodge in my heart. It demands everything – all my time and energy. It influences all of my thoughts and feelings and prevents me from even wanting to be faithful. But, worst of all, it seems so powerful in my fight against it. It whispers that I would be happy if I would just surrender, lie down and give up. Just one bite. You will not surely die.

Josh told me last night that Doubt only declares. It doesn’t provide answers. It doesn’t even wait for answers. It doesn’t comfort. It doesn’t provide happiness or joy or fulfillment. It is a worm that feeds on faith.

I’m trying to fight for my faith, trying to shield it from the arrows of Doubt. To believe that God is who He says He is and that He will do what He has promised. If He said it then it’s true.

And, right now, the reward I seek is more faith – enough to keep me from giving in and losing this battle. After all, what does Doubt promise me? Nothing but darkness. Faith promises joy that comes in the morning.

In the midst of this battle I am increasingly grateful for worship – the one place where I feel myself to be what I truly am: a believer. I read Psalm 84 and I know exactly what he’s talking about, living from Sunday to Sunday, longing to be in God’s house, with God’s people.

It is in worship that the clouds dissipate and light shines clearly. Surely God has proved Himself to me over and over. I have every reason in the world to believe Him and that by believing I am not whistling in the dark. That’s good because whistling in the dark never brings light – only God can do that.

I don’t know why they call it an adoption “disruption.” As if you’ve been sleeping peacefully and are suddenly awakened. I guess it’s like the word “miscarriage” – a sterile, technical term that does nothing to describe the shock or grief or subsequent pain.

I could say that no one thought for a minute this would happen. Everything about this adoption was textbook – the birthmom was as determined as you could wish; everyone involved was convinced that every step was providential and could not be more wonderfully progressing. I could say that there were so many unforeseen complications that, in the end, turned the entire thing on its head. I could say that and start looking for someone (or Someone) to blame. I could say those things, but it doesn’t really help.

How is it possible to miss two babies whom I did not deliver and whom I only saw for a couple of minutes? We planned for them and prayed for them and considered them ours only for a few months. The world of adoption brings strange avenues of loss and grief.

A friend and I were talking about the Mariah Carey song that says, “Though hope is frail it’s hard to kill.” That’s pretty much the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Hope can easily be killed. I’ve seen it die in my own heart several times over. I’ve seen it die in Josh’s. As if Hope has its own life inside of you and it just keeps living on no matter what happens. Not in my world.

Why does Paul list Hope among the greatest of Christian virtues? Why not simply prepare ourselves for the worst and live each day expecting sorrow? Why does God command us to do the hard, hard work of continuing to expect and pray for good things? And what does it mean to hope anyway? It’s not like simply by believing and hoping I can achieve miracles. (All due respect to Ms. Carey…)

God is not a tame lion. But even if He is not tame, He is still my God – and the God of my children. My Hope rests entirely in God being who He says He is. He says He is Father to the fatherless and defender of the poor and forsaken. That’s how I know His calling on our lives to adopt is not a cruel joke or a mistake. That’s how I know we are right where we’re supposed to be and I knew it all during that horrible, painful week. That’s my Hope and that’s why we love adoption and that’s why we’ll just keep trying. Like Faith and like Love, Hope too is action.

Josh and I have dipped our toes into the ocean of adoption. We spend most of our time happily gazing at our wet feet, looking at all the little fish swimming around us and thinking these waters really aren’t that deep. We can do this. We can sign our names to a million forms and explain to our social worker why we want children and take a trip to the police station to get fingerprinted. No problem. Bring it on.

But then I’m forced to lift my gaze to the vastness of the ocean we’ve stepped into. 143 million orphans worldwide. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Abuse. Neglect. Heartbreak. There are new places in my heart where pain and ugliness and cruelty reside. Facts in my head that never used to be there. Questions about the justice of God in a world that is far worse than I ever imagined.

I don’t know what to do with this. How will I not sink in these waters? When we were first considering adoption and all was light and newness a friend wrote to me something I will never forget. She told me that adoption is always the result of grief – of things not being the way they’re supposed to be. She was telling me what a precious bond can be formed between children who miss their biological parents and parents who could not have biological children. She was encouraging me, at bottom, to embrace the heartbreak – the “fallenness” of the world – because the Lord can work wonders in the midst of it all.

I don’t know how to be OK with fallenness. I don’t know how to survive in this world of ugliness; hating it, and yet willingly living in it. I think of all the terrible things that happen to children and I want to run far, far away. How will one adoption help?

I am afraid of these things. They bring me to tears. So why is it that I somehow feel such honor and privilege to be entering this world? Why is it that I am glad to be here and that I hope I stay all the rest of my life?