Please know before I write much that I am still fully thankful and appreciative for all of God's goodness and mercy every step of the way. I am still in awe of what has been provided and what miracles we have already seen. I will never forget this period of provision and mercy and goodness and miracles.
Nor will I forget this period of stops and starts, one step forwards and two steps backs, delays, self-imposed time frames that keep getting shattered, feeling like everyone else knows the rules to the game and we just now realized we were playing, and hours spent standing at the window.
I am even struggling with writing this post because I am always so torn, both with this adoption and the rest of LIFE, between being positive and being real and they are sometimes mutually exclusive. I don't want to do anything less than lift Him up and give honor to the process but sometimes it is just HARD.
I have learned about myself that I'm a bad waiter and I'm a blamer. I'm not proud of either of those things. I am so easily swayed by my circumstances and when I get a picture in my head of how things should go and how timelines should work, I mentally react like a toddler when they don't happen that way. I also look immediately for someone to hold responsible. The past seven months have revealed to me many things about myself, some flattering and then the ones above which are.... NOT.
Today I was just irritable all day long. My day started with learning that you don't even start checking for passport progress for ten business days and the middle part brought the information that visas can't start till passports are FINISHED and it ended by learning that one couple we know has been waiting TWO MONTHS on visas since the passport appointment and still have nothing. And I'm just going to shoot totally straight here, I stay annoyed that I know so little and am so powerless. It really is like there is this giant game that you are required to play and literally everyone else knows the rules and you don't and you feel like an idiot for not knowing but yet how COULD you know because you've never played before and honestly you weren't even aware that there WAS a game until very recently. And the other layer of all of that is guilt for even feeling this way when we are truly in the best case scenario in the entire adoption world and yet I still feel like this.
Today we had major storms. Hail the size of golfballs and in some cases almost TENNIS balls fell all over this town, shattering car windshields and damaging roofs and house windows. When Kraig called to tell me to move my car in the garage, I did so and then stood in the mudroom, holding back the curtain, staring out the (messy) window. I stood there, I am ashamed to say, for close to an hour. My feet hurt, and yet I stood. I wanted to sit down, could have sat down, and yet I stood. I had a million things to do, and yet I stood. I had other windows in my house I could have watched from much more comfortable seating, and yet I stood. And while I stood, watching, I surfed facebook and looked at the pictures and videos people were posting of their hail, their storm. And I waited and watched for ours, stood uncomfortably at the window watching, and it never came.
I think what bugs me the most about all of this is that I don't have to stand at the window and I'm tired of standing at the window and yet I can't make myself walk away from the window. As Kraig told me today, we have done absolutely everything we can do. Our part of the paperwork has been finished, we have thought through every possible angle that might speed things up and our work is finished. But for whatever reason, I can't quit waiting and watching. I have a life. In fact, a very full and busy one. If I would just throw myself into that life, I bet one day I would glance up and find an email inviting us to come get our kids. But here I am, standing at the window, driving myself crazy, checking the visa status online for a case that cannot even be scheduled until passports are issued. So what in the world is the point in checking the visa status page??? I don't know. But we window watchers don't need a reason.
{I do feel like I need to say that there is a really specific reason that the timeline matters a lot right now and it's a purely unselfish motive. We desperately need the kids here and settled significantly before an incredibly important week in June, a week that affects far more people than the 7 in this household. It's not JUST that we are eager to have them here, although I'm sure that I would be window watching even without the June week issue... }
So it's past time for me to go to bed and tomorrow may be a good day, may be an easy day. I might see things in an entirely positive way and not feel "time's winged chariot" at my back. Or, tomorrow may be a lot like today. I might spend some time at the window. And if I do, this is going to be the verse I use to remind myself that I'm not actually standing at this window alone. He doesn't need to look out the window because not only does He know the end of the story, He wrote the story. But He is still willing to stand there with me, understanding my human weakness. He will slide His hand under my elbow or put His arm around my back and gently hold me upright when I feel too weak to stand but am too stubborn to walk away. He will hold the curtain back so I can see a little bit further down the road. And He will remind me that
I am he who will sustain you.Even when He's only carrying me to the window.
I have made you and I will carry you.
Isaiah 46:4
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