Meet Me

I’m going to start off by saying I’m being very transparent in this blog post.  I am not looking for people to be judgmental.  I’m just going to share with you some of the very raw emotion I’ve been having over the last few months, and how God met me head on in the midst of all of those emotions.

I honestly can say that I did not start off on the best foot in 2013.  This year has been full of so many emotions, it’s not even funny.  I apologize for the lengthiness of this—I will try to be succinct in explaining it all, and then showing how God met me Thursday night in the midst of my craziness.

I think I mentioned earlier that we started trying to have another child in June 2011.  It has not happened yet.  We’ve been thinking and discussing adoption for a year now, and once we hit last June (one year of trying without getting pregnant), we decided to pursue adoption.  There’s another long story (I think I covered it in an earlier blog post) about why we chose adoption over fertility treatments.  Anyway, I was initially fine with the idea of adopting.  As time has gone on, though, the desire to get pregnant again has become overwhelming at times.  I long to feel a baby kicking inside of me again, and I long to have another newborn.  This has gotten harder and harder over time, especially lately as my facebook feed has been filled with pregnancy announcements.  I had 3 separate announcements come across my feed in one week not long ago.  Where I am happy for these people, inside it eats away at me (just being honest here).  I consider myself one of the lucky ones too in that I have a biological child.  There are so many people out there who would do (and are doing) everything they possibly can do in order to have their own biological child.  I cannot imagine—it is a very raw emotion.

As far as adoption goes, I feel that we are called to adopt.  There is absolutely no question about it.  God has called us to do it, and we are going down that road in faith.  However, it is not the road that I would have initially chosen for our family.  My plans were to have 2 biological children, put a bow on it, and call it a day.  That is obviously not God’s plans.  We all know that God’s plans are not always our plans, and it’s best to follow God’s directions (as to not end up in the belly of a whale).  It’s amazing how we want to fight and argue with Him over His plans, even when we know they are for the best. 

“This is God’s universe, and He does things His way.  You may have a better way, but you don’t have a universe.”   J. Vernon McGee

 Anyway, in the midst of all this emotion, David and I have had some serious discussions about continuing with adoption.  They have been very emotional.  In fact I told him the other day that if we received an email that said the whole adoption program for the country we’re adopting from were to shut down today, I’d say “oh well” and move on.  This has saddened David greatly.  It stems from the overwhelming desire to get pregnant again, and how this is not the path I envisioned our family taking.

We have also entered the, well, I’ll call it the “terrific two/terrific three” state around here.  A normal day includes meltdowns over…everything.  We are working hard on the gift of listening to each other as well.  I have the tendency to shut down and just let things go when this behavior starts (not the correct thing to do), because being consistent is difficult, and honestly, most of the time I just do not know how to deal with it.  I see all these facebook posts where it appears people have the most perfect family, kids, and a house that is clean and decorated so nicely that it looks like a Southern Living show case house.  In my house, the toys are strewn all over the floor (they are lucky if they get picked up once a week), and I look forward to my Tues/Thurs mornings when Kathryn’s in preschool in hopes of getting 1-2 rooms partially clean and the laundry that’s been sitting on the guest bed for several days hung up!  Forget the dust and vacuuming is a luxury (and I have 1 kid)!  All of this builds up, and talk about frustration.  This leads to my seriously considering going back to work full time (because, in all honesty, I feel depressed over losing that job “identity” when I worked), where I could escape the frustration of not knowing how to handle the challenges of parenting, and I could and would pay someone to come in once every week or two to clean my house! 

These feelings of frustration, lack of identity, and lack of accomplishment make me start second guessing my abilities as a mother, which then make me start thinking that I should not have any more children.  That leads into the whole adoption thing, and my questioning if I’m really up for dealing with the issues we’ll be facing with adoption.  That then leads into the whole I wish I could just get pregnant on my own issue, which leads back to frustration, and you see how the cycle starts to go around and around.  I think Emerson Eggerichs may call this “the crazy cycle”.  You go around and around and around and never. stop.

So, here I was in this crazy cycle.  Well, our church has a women’s conference in January called Chosen.  I do not like to attend women’s conferences.  They intimidate me.  I am not a social person by any means, and nothing turns me off more than being in a room full of women who are all sitting with their friends, and here I am by myself.  I didn’t go last year for that very purpose.  I’ve always sat by myself at the other women’s conferences, etc, I’ve attended, and felt so uncomfortable.  This year, though, I kept getting an urging to go.  Finally I put out a comment on facebook to see if anyone was going in hopes of hooking up with some ladies to sit with to deal with the comfort issue.  I had some friends invite me to sit with them, which solved that problem.  Anyway, back to the crazy cycle.  In the midst of all my emotions, I knew and longed for an encounter with God.  I needed him to touch my heart, heal me, and bring me to my knees.  I longed for that—it has been so, so , so very long since I’ve felt His touch.  In the 2 days prior to the conference, all I could pray was “God, meet me there”. 

The day of the conference, I saw a friend (someone who I haven’t spoken to in a long time, and rarely see), put a comment on facebook about how she had a rough day and was looking forward to the conference.  I remember thinking to myself that every day is a rough day, and again saying my quick one liner prayer for God to meet me there.  Well, on Thursday I also finished up compiling the last documents for our dossier, and shipped them off, along with several checks which totaled a pile of money, to our adoption agency.  I’m still doing this in faith, even though it’s killing me inside that this is not MY plan (which leads to more emotion).  Well, David gets home from work and we proceed to have a massive argument (over money—more specifically over fast food for the night), and so I leave to run some errands and go to the conference.  I did not want to go.  All the time while driving I convinced myself that I was done being a SAHM, and was going back to work full time.  I didn’t care what he thought, and if this would make him pull the plug on adoption, then so be it.  I finally made it to Seacoast, and remember thinking as I walked in the door that I hoped God would meet me.  I had no clue I was going to get that encounter within the first 2 minutes.

When I walked in the door I proceeded to get my wrist band, and then walked over to a quiet corner and checked my email to see where I was supposed to meet my friends.  I couldn’t find the email.  Then, out of nowhere, the friend I mentioned earlier (the one with the facebook post about having a rough day and looking forward to the conference) came up to me.  We said hello, and she proceeded to tell me that she has been praying for our adoption and for things to move along quickly (she had known about our adoption from my facebook posts).  She asked how things were going, and I gave the generalized answer “fine”.  [Now, let me make this disclaimer:  all of these emotions that I have written about I have kept to myself.  I have not posted anything on facebook about them, nor have I told anyone other than David.]  She then proceeded to tell me that she was having a heaviness on her heart that a big decision needed to be made about our adoption, and she has been praying for that decision.  The tears began to flow, and oh did they flow.  She had felt drawn to me when she saw me, and felt the prompting of the Holy Spirit to come over and talk to me.  We then talked about the adoption thing, and the big argument that David and I had prior to my being there.  She suggested we go into the prayer room and talk/approach God about all of this.  She and another lady prayed over me (all the while the tears were flowing), and how the Holy Spirit worked in all of that was amazing.  They confirmed that I am supposed to be a mother (we hadn’t even talked about my frustrations there at all), for healing and restoration with David and I and in dealing with different viewpoints on budgeting issues, and several other things .  They prayed that all of these worries would wash away, and I literally felt them wash down my body and out of my feet.  Incredible.  There He was—He met me in the first 2 minutes of walking in the room.  I am grateful for the friend that followed the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and was open and willing to hear Him.

Afterwards I went on in to the auditorium for the conference.  And you know what?  All the anxiety about sitting with friends, wasn’t there anymore.  It didn’t matter to me who I sat with.  I knew I was in the presence of God the entire time, and that’s all that mattered.  He knows my struggles, all my emotions, and He is the only one who can fix them all.