I Lost It

Somewhere between being confident that I could stay calm and in control before our home visit on Friday and the actual home visit at 1 pm, I lost it.

I kept telling myself all day Thurday and Friday morning, “I can handle it. I will not go into a cleaning frenzy. I will stay calm. I will control myself.” And I did all of these things–for a while.

Then mid-Friday morning–I lost it. I yelled at the kids (who were not being very cooperative, but still did not deserve to be yelled at). Then I threw myself on my bed sobbing and crying out to God(finally!)

Why, after all the lessons, do I still think I can handle things myself? Why do I turn to God as a last resort? Not that I had not prayed about the situation, but I was still trying to handle things on my own.

My sweet 6-year-old, Caleb, who’s always the first to comfort me when I cry, came to me, laid his head on me and patted me gently on the back. His 3-year-old brother, Titus, who does everything Caleb does, did the same.

Then I called a dear friend who I new would give me some godly encouragement. She reminded me that we both know whenever there is something important like this scheduled the enemy is going to strike. And I could clearly see this in my day. Suddenly I was filled with thoughts like, “What am I doing? I can’t even handle the three kids I have and I’m trying to adopt another?” This is clearly a lie. But trying to handle things on my own left me vulnerable to believing such lies. She also said, “I’ve been to your house, and I don’t think you need to do anything else to your house today. You need to take care of your kids and concentrate on fighting this spiritual battle.” This was very encouraging coming from someone whose home looks like it could be in a magazine everytime I visit. So I took her advice.

And, of course, the home study went fine. Caleb and Titus had a bit more energy than they usually do. They always put on quite a show whenever we have company!

I don’t know why I’m sharing all of this. Maybe I need to get a different blog to share spiritual lessons I’m learning since this just has a little to do with adoption. I guess I just feel like it would help us all if we knew that everyone messed up like this sometimes. That lots of people have days where they lose it. That lots of people struggle with letting God be in control. So I pray that all of this will help someone.

Kim

Home study

A quick prayer request today as the social worker who is doing our home study is coming for a home visit this afternoon at 1pm. I have let go a lot of my perfectionistic tendencies regarding my house over the years. Most days I tell myself, “Three boys and I are home pretty much all day everyday–this is just the way my house is going to look for now.” And I’m okay with that–most days. But when someone’s coming for the purpose of seeing my house–this stresses me out. So please pray that God will relieve my anxiety about this.

We met our social worker for the first time Monday, and she’s great! There’s really no reason for me to be stressed.

We’ve gotten a whole lot done this week as far as paper work goes. Most importantly we sent our application to U.S. Immigration requesting permission to bring an immigrant orphan into the country. I’m tempted to ask for prayers that God would speed things along. (Government agencies can be so slow!) But instead I’ll ask for prayers that everything regarding our adoption will be in God’s timing. God already knows who are daughter is, and she may not even be born yet.

I plan to write more soon about how we came to the decision to adopt.

Thanks so much for the prayers!

Waiting

I want to share some thoughts I journaled on Monday concerning the adoption. That’s the day I told Tommy we really need a blog so I can share my thoughts about the adoption as we go through it.

I wrote:

I am reading a daily devotional that I received from Ransomed Heart Ministries a few weeks ago on “waiting.” It is about waiting on heaven. But to me it speaks on a different level about the anticipated adoption of our daughter. I just feel such an anxiousness right now concerning our adoption. I know I need to let it go. Let God be in control. I am anxious for our daughter–her safety, how her care now (or early in her life) will affect her. I just desperately want these waiting months to be over. I want to have her now. I have to surrender this to God or it will drive me crazy. I know this. But doing it–that’s a different thing.

This is from the Ransomed Heart daily devotional which is from their book The Journey of Desire:

To wait is to learn the spiritual grace detachment, the freedom of desire. Not the absence of desire, but desire at rest. St.John of the Cross lamented that “the desires weary and fatigue the soul; for they are like restless and discontented children, who are ever demanding this or that from their mother, and are never contented.” Detachment is coming to the place where those demanding children are at peace. As King David said, “I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child within me.” (Psa. 131:2) Such a beautiful picture, a young one leaning against her mother’s breast. There is no fussing, no insistent tears.

She has learned to wait. The word detachment might evoke wrong impressions.

It is not a cold and indifferent attitude; not at all. May writes, “An authentic spiritual understanding of detachment devalues neither desire nor the objects of desire.” Instead, it “aims at correcting one’s own anxious grasping in order to free oneself for committed relationship to God.”

As Thomas a Kempis declared, “Wait a little while, O my soul, wait for the divine promise, and thou shalt have abundance of all good things in heaven.” In this posture we discover that, indeed, we are expanded by longing. Something grows in us, a capacity if you will, for life and love and God. I think of Romans 8:24-25:”That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy”(The Message). There is actually a sweet pain in longing, if we will let it draw our hearts homeward.

 

Talking to a friend yesterday she said, “You think you’re ready for something–that God has called you to it. Then you do it, and it brings out things in you that you didn’t know were there.” That’s exactly how I feel. Before this, I would have said that I trust God. But right now it’s not so easy to trust Him as it has been. Maybe that’s why God kept telling me to trust him over and over and over at the Captivating Women’s Retreat I went to last month. He knew that I was going to need to trust Him more–that it’s time to grow in my trusting of Him.

 

So today I decided that I’m taking a few days off of schooling the boys (we haven’t had our fall break yet anyway) so that I can focus the next week on getting all of the adoption documents in order that I can right now. I’M trying to CONTROL the timing of the adoption–thinking if we get this done quickly that will take a couple of months off of our wait. When in actuality there are no guarantees on how long this whole process will take. The whole thing is truly in God’s timing and His timing is perfect.

 

So may you learn the spiritual grace of detachment and be enlarged by the waiting of whatever your heart is longing for.

 

Thanks for all your prayers and encouragement!

 

We love you all!

Kim

 

 

 

Welcome To Our Adoption Journal

We had our first meeting with the social worker who’s doing our home study today. It went well, and we are so excited about really getting started! On the other hand I have had a hard time trying to do something which should be very simple–getting my passport photo. After two trips to Walgreens and two photos taken, I still don’t have photos. I hope they will be waiting for me in the morning. Also, we have been filling out paperwork yesterday and today, and I have had a splitting headache that I cannot get rid of for the past day and a half. I’m started to believe that there’s something more going on here. There IS someone who does not want this adoption to take place and will do whatever he can to discourage us. So we have been praying against the spiritual battle that we believe is going on around us. Scripture makes it clear that there is an invisible battle going on around us.
I just had a conversation yesterday with a friend about how Satan takes something that we believe God has led us to do and tries to twist it and use it to pull us away from God instead. I am experiencing that now. I tend to be obsessive about whatever I happen to be interested in at any given time. Right now that is China and adoption. I’m reading everything I can about China, why so many girls are abandoned in China, adopted children, the adoption process, etc. I am even listen to a cd of the Beijing Children’s Choir of Chinese songs. I am obsessed with this to the point that I have to force myself to stop reading about these things to spend time with God. I know that it should not be this way. So I have been praying that this adoption process would draw me closer to God instead of away. And in addition, I am doing what my friend suggested and letting Satan know that this is between me and God and to butt out.

Some prayer requests:

The wait right now from the time we send all of our documents to China until being assigned a child is 14 months. That with the 4-5 months it normally takes to get all the needed documents ready to send to China plus the 4-8 weeks to receive travel approval and make travel arrangements make this process as long as 20-21 months. The time from mailing documents to China to receiving a referral (your assigned child) has been known to decrease to as low as 8 months at this time last year. We are trying to get our documents ready in as little as 2-3 months. Please pray for us as we work on this–it’s been very stressful so far. Also, pray that the time to receive a referral from China will decrease. And as always pray for our daughter who most likely has not been born yet but will be abandoned at some point and sent to live in an orphange.

Thanks so much for all of your prayers.

We love you!
Kim

Safe Keeping

October 10th, 2006

Chinese Orphanage

We have finished our initial application to be adoptive parents. There are so many things that I have not ever really thought about. Over our long wait I will share them as I can.

This picture starts to get at one thing that I have been forced to think of as I have prayed for the little girl that may have just recently been born or will be soon. In the Chinese process (normally, which of course things right now are not normal) the time from beginning of the process to when you go to China to officially adopt is about a year. The wait right now has been being a bit longer. The children are normally 9 to 12 months old. All that to say, about the time you start the process is near the birth of the child.

As I have prayed and realized that “our” daughter is being born and abandoned left to be cared for in a orphanage or at best in foster care. I have had to pray and ask for God to care for her, to keep her safe, to protect her health, to protect her spirit. I tell you that knowing there are those like her is a sad thing, something you hate is happening but not normally something that breaks our hearts. But when its a little girl that will/is your daughter. Destined to (If God allows)be a part of your family… knowing that she is beyond your care, that you can’t comfort her when she cries, that she along with all the other babies is alone… to think that I can’t rescue her while she waits for help is hard to even pray about.

God must look at his children who he knows will become a part of his family and be in anguish while they live out life prior to their being found by Jesus.