Waiting

"We are not a service provider for furthering your family, but an agency for protecting and advocating for children by finding them good homes."

Not 10 minutes into our first adoption class and I am frantically dabbing tears away before they're noticed and I am labeled among the weak.  

Our first class… Our family... Our children... Our process... Our licensure…Our story...

Under the saturation of “ours” that flood my brain, not once have I genuinely paused to consider the actuality of these stories unfolding now, even as I sit in a Sunday School room across town. Stories are being lived right now by unsuspecting children.  The boy trapped in the storm of unknowns sits in fear now. The girl paralyzed by her past withdraws into herself now. They’re waiting now; not an idea, but living, breathing beings… now. 

So enthralled with the process and product, I walk into a room with ideas of my strengths, my experiences, my support system, and what I have to offer a child.  The day begins and bullet point after bullet point disarm me from my arsenal of offerings and leave me with nothing left.  

I cannot heal a shattered heart. I cannot compensate neglect. I cannot eradicate ghosts of the past.  I cannot restore a broken spirit. It is not within my capability. It’s far beyond any training, any confidence, any gifting.  Adoption is not about me nor even my family. 

 Adoption is not of Edenic creation, but a necessary grace from our savior bred from the product of our sin.  The gravity of this reality settles into the pit of my stomach and the tenderness of my heart.   

I've romanticized the ideal of adoption and, embarrassingly, have only just conceptualized that our son(s) and or daughter(s), more likely than not, walk this earth... right now. We are breathing the same air. We are sharing the same sky and passing the same time.  No longer a future concept or figment conceived in imagination, but flesh and blood and soul just waiting. And we wait too. Disarmed with nothing to offer, we wait too.  Knelt at the foot of the cross where we’ve received beauty for ashes, we wait. I’ve nothing to offer, but the presence of the Holy Spirit through two wretched souls adopted too as children of the King. All I have is Christ. 

I am being called into a ministry that is messy, weighty, and so much greater than me. 
Overwhelmed by my misconception of this calling and drawn into my own adoption story, I sit.  Once a dead and hopeless object of wrath, but now made alive, sealed by the Holy Spirit, and lavished in the riches of His grace.  He calls me his daughter.  He predestined my adoption before the foundations of the world.  He heals my shattered heart. He knows my innermost depths. He redeems my past and restores my soul. And I wait too, but, oh, how much lighter the expectation when the weight of glory sits promised at the finish line. I know my Father is coming for me.  

I return to the present, the here and now in which my children live.  They know not that their mommy is coming for them.  They don’t know that there daddy is longing to rescue them from their present darkness.  Do they even know of the one who has called us into this ministry of parenthood?  Do they know that He longs eagerly to beckon us into eternity with him?

I know this of love that while we were sinners, Christ died for us, thus adopting us into his family as children of the Most High. This is the sun to my moon, a direct reflection of the Gospel. 

And who am I that I would be allowed to imitate such love?