Monday, October 19, 2015

Where are you?

Something I get asked on a weekly basis by friends and family is; where are you in the adoption process?

I love the question, because I know that people care about our journey, about the kids we hope to adopt some day, and are excited for us. The problem is, I never know how to answer it.

The waters of adoption are murky. Sometimes you think you are making no progress, and look down and realize you really have gone places, and other times you think you've been running, but not realizing you're on a treadmill and not going ANYWHERE and exhausting yourself for no reason! Sometimes the progress you've made isn't physical, sometimes it's what God is doing in your heart to prepare you for what it to come... and really, how do you measure that? How do you tell someone 'where' you are in the process, because you're on this journey, with sharp bends, corners, hills, and valleys, and when you've taken the first step on this journey, you don't know how long it is, what it's like, where it goes... so you never know 'where' you are, you just know that you are where God has you. And the funny thing is, when you think you've reached the 'end,' that part where your kids actually come home, you realize you've really only begun!

I think it took me something like 6 months to FINALLY get ahold of the social worker we have to go through. I felt every email I sent, every voice message I left, just got sent into the vast open desert to be lost forever. When she finally answered one day, I was in so much shock that there was actually a voice on the other side of the line, that I didn't even know what to say and was just speechless. She probably thought it was some prank call as I stumbled over my words trying to think of what to say now that she was actually on the phone.

Some people ask 'Why do you keep going through them then? It's so slow, and hard!' Yes. Yes it is. And we know we're not even in the thick of things, we know we're just beginning. But all adoptions are hard, and you never know how long each one is going to take. So we press forward. We call. We write. We fundraise, because we know that when the bills come they will be high and costly, and it's only a matter of time before they come. We fill out forms for a home study we don't know exactly when we will get the go ahead to dive into.

So why? Why do it, why wait, why press forward, why pay the costs, why not just move on? Because we can't.

We can't, because God didn't on us. We've been adopted as God's sons and daughters, and he has paid a far greater price for us then we will ever pay. He didn't stop pursuing us, just because it got hard, just because it was slow, just because we never answered HIS calls out to us. He kept pushing forward, until we came to him. Until we were home in HIS ARMS. So we will push, we will pursue, we will work, we will cry, we will fall to our knees until they are callous and sore, bruised and bloody; because each child matters, each child deserves a family, and we won't stop until our kids, whomever they may be, are home in our arms.