“Is the adoption thing still happening? “
This is a question I have gotten several times in the past few months; and it kind of makes my stomach churn.
The question itself is totally intentional and reasonable; my response is what stings.
“Yes, it’s still happening. Just waiting on the Lord’s timing”, I usually spit out.
Seven.
That’s the number of times we have said, “Yes” to a child– only to be told, “No” by the birth mother.
Seven days, weeks, months of praying for and envisioning what it would look like to have that baby in our home- only to find out that wasn’t our baby after all.
The most recent one happened on Wednesday, and I would be lying if I said that I was feeling anything but wearied in the process.
Adoption is not for the faint of heart; domestic adoption is a whole other beast.
Yep, I said it. The process we are in that will ultimately be the means to add to our family is in fact, a beast. A beast because, ultimately, in a not-so-fallen world, it would not exist to begin with.
Adoption is messy.
Adoption is broken.
Adoption is each of our stories.
“Yet to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God- children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”- John 1:12-13
This is adoption in its greatest magnitude.
When we began this process (it will be two years in January), we knew that waiting would be involved- and we were great with that. We had been learning how to wait- waiting on answers, waiting on a diagnosis, waiting on God to change and transform our hearts to see the life He had given our family through His eyes- waiting was normal for us. What I don’t think we realized was how hard each and every, “No” would be.
I have never had a miscarriage.
I do not know the pain of biological loss.
But, as a future adoptive mama, I do know the grief of imagining life with a child only to be told this life was not going to ever make it to my hands.
Like we all do, so many have desired for us to take matters into our own hands–to try different agencies, to attempt to have another biological child, to change to international adoption. None of these wrong within themselves; yet none of them settling well within our spirits. At this time, God’s plan for the Cheek family is just to wait- and it’s just not easy.
“He does not grow weary.”- Isaiah 40:28
A simple phrase with profound meaning that has caused me to fall more in love with the Lord as I have meditated on it.
I am weary.
I am run down in the wait. I am burnt out, spent, drained- reluctant to experience any more of the path of obedience the Lord has us on. I am ready to take matters into my own hands or, at the very least, shake my fist at God and ask Him why we seem to continue to get these thorny paths. But God?
He never grows weary.
His strength is not dependent on mine. His plans cannot be thwarted by anything my flesh falls into or my mind concocts. What He says, He shall do (Isaiah 34:17)- and this I know (regardless of how things may seem or how I can sometimes feel):
God is for me (Psalm 56:9).
God is for me- so we wait.
God is for me- so we rest.
God is for me- so we trust in His grace to carry us to Himself- come what may.
“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?”- Romans 8:31-32
Friends, I don’t know how long it will be. I don’t know why God is making this path that we call our life so full of twists and turns. But what I do know trumps that which I do not know.
He is working.
At all times.
In all things.
And He is not weary.
To Him be the glory forever and ever Amen.
(continued thanks to Trisha Ralston photography for these special pictures)
Seeds and Leaven 