The past few weeks have been draining.
It’s Lent, so my husband has two sermons to write and
memorize each week instead of one.
I fill in as organist more often to relieve the burden on our one
regular church organist. Our
church has received a request to form a dual parish with another church of our
fellowship (located 30 miles away), so there’s been a lot of conversation on
that. Work has been just exhausting for me. The kids have been SO wired and loud and crazy. Finally, of course, there is adoption
paperwork. We thought we were
‘done’ with the home study, only to have our social worker request scans of
certain dossier documents before she wrote it. Understandable, but hard for us to do in this busy season,
in which we are struggling to find time to sit down together and get any sort of serious decisions made.
We may be changing our country choice, which would mean
switching to another agency for placement after our home study is done and in
our hands. I don’t know what our
home study (current) agency will think or do about that, but we have to do
what’s right for us. We never were
‘decided’ on country choice (just ‘declared’), can’t see how any of their
country programs are going to work for us, and they have been questioning our
declaration since we made it, encouraging us to continue elsewhere. No decisions have been made – at this
point, the goal is to simply get the home study done and go from there. But it’s something needing to be
carefully thought over, something else to consider amidst this very mentally
full schedule of ours.
It was a wonderful day for some special friends of ours and
the adoption of their baby girl was finalized in court today. Yesterday was a grand day for the
sister of an online acquaintance, as they received word that they will soon be
parents of twin 3-year-old boys. I
admit, my first, knee-jerk reaction was to cry out of pure selfishness. What wasn’t it OUR turn? WE’ve been waiting for over six years
for children; these couples had only been waiting about four years each. When, Lord, will it
be MY time?
Yes, selfish.
My struggle today is to rejoice in their triumphs. And as both couples praise God for
answered prayers, I look to focus on my prayers that have been answered, instead of whining about the big one that hasn’t yet received my desired answer.
I prayed long and hard for a significant other…boyfriend or
fiancé or husband…and was blessed with my wonderful man, with whom I went from
dating to engaged to married in less than ten months. Many times, while working long, stressful hours to support
my husband through Seminary, I pleaded with God that it would end. It did. I asked my Heavenly Father for my husband’s vicarage (internship)
to be someplace warm, and his first Call to be somewhere back in the
Midwest. YES on both counts, and
oh my, what joyful days those were!
There has also been an unexpected blessing that I never
asked for when we decided, rather suddenly, to get a dog last November. I cannot even begin to express the joy
she has brought us! She has been
such a loving, nurturing, healing balm to my hurting heart over the last several
months. We have asked ourselves
several times, “Why did we wait so long to get a dog?” only to realize that, if
we hadn’t waited, we wouldn’t have this one.
What a fitting prelude to our future adoption.
