9 weeks! It’s so hard to believe that it’s been just over 2 months since our new Little One arrived in our lives – it feels like he has been a part of us forever. I say “arrived”, but it was more that he descended like a whirlwind – suddenly, without warning, and leaving an indelible wake of forever-change in our lives with his passage.
The past 2 months have been so full, but oh the lessons we are learning. The days may be fraught with adjustment, chaos, shifting family dynamics, tumultuous emotions, multiple visits with birth mom per week, court dates, mountains of laundry (oh the never ending loads!!!) and stacks of unwashed dishes, but the joys of loving our Little Gift and watching him grow, the reward of his precious smiles, the support of our community – which we are discovering is larger than we ever imagined, and the radiant glimpses of the Father’s heart and His Love for us have far outweighed the challenges. I can reflect on this today from a place of peace while in the midst of it all, recognizing that only a week ago my perspective was quite different. A week ago, my view was rather restricted – constrained to a 24 hour period, a court decision and the moment by moment choice to trust and rest in the peace of God. To trust His plan and surrender our own. We were waiting. Waiting to see if Little One’s stay had come to an abrupt halt. Waiting to see what the future for our family would look like as a result of the courts’ decision. Waiting for the phone call that would tell us if it was to be a day of tears or celebration.
Thankfully, gratefully, the call was a celebratory one and we’ve been granted a few more months with our Little Gift. Months in which to make some very precious memories. Months to cover him in prayer for his present and his future and share the Love of God with him. Months to love on him and help build the foundation of healthy attachment that he will need to take with him into the future and his relationships. Months to shower him with kisses and the exuberant love of two little brothers who think he is the BEST and who can’t wait for him to grow up so they can play catch with him and teach him to build Lego. My prayer is that the months turn into forever, so that my little boys’ dreams and mine can come true. But for now we have a few months. Until once again a court will need to make a decision as to where this Little Gift will call home. And once again, we are in the waiting.
Since we started on this journey of foster to adopt it has felt like a continual waiting. Waiting to file our application, waiting for orientation dates, waiting to finish orientation, waiting for the home study, waiting for a foster license, then waiting for a placement. And then suddenly, here he was. For a brief moment I held onto the hope that maybe our waiting was over. But we were only just beginning. What started as a straight forward case has become something the likes of which our Little One’s case worker has never seen before. One of so many twists and turns that going into court last week we were told that there was honestly no way to predict the outcome – we would have to wait and see. And so we continue to wait, but there has been a shift in how we wait.
One of the hardest things for my 4 and 6 year old boys to hear is the word “wait” and it elicits some pretty dramatic responses sometimes. Often as adults, I think we respond in similar ways to the periods of waiting that we face in our life’s journey. Wait. It’s not a word that we enjoy. It means that we can’t have what we want right when we want it. We resent waiting and find all kinds of ways to avoid it. It’s funny to me that we don’t ever seem to get used to it when you consider how much time in our lives is spent simply waiting. Waiting in line ups at amusement parks and coffee shops, in grocery stores and drive-thrus and traffic. In waiting rooms and offices and hallways. In cars and on planes, inside and outdoors. For phone calls or emails – that job offer, a promotion, a court verdict, a baby announcement, or the doctors report. For healing of bodies and hearts and relationships. For happiness or the next “big break”. Waiting for love, for that “special someone”, for friendships and relationships to begin or hoping for a way out of one that is inflicting pain. Waiting for success or for dreams to come true. Waiting to start a family – for a test to say positive, for a doctor to say you qualify, for a judge to say “yes”. For what is ahead or what you hope will be. Waiting to grow up, for graduation, a first kiss, a job, a car, a vacation. Waiting for life to slow down, for rest, for retirement. For things to get better. Waiting for life to begin or sometimes for it to end.
Waiting is something that every one of us has in common, but we all wait differently. Take some time to observe people in any “waiting” situation and you will see this become evident. Sometimes the waiting is for trivial things, sometimes for happy things and sometimes it is for the really hard things. Sometimes waiting is dull and tedious. Or dry, like the desert. Sometimes waiting is an excuse not to do something that we should, an escape from being truly present. Sometimes waiting can be just as hard as being in the midst of a storm – but instead of your boat being tossed in the waves, you sit becalmed. Stuck. Sometimes the wait is a short one and for others it drags on and on, but it’s how we wait that makes the difference for each individual. How we wait is a reflection of what is happening on the inside of our hearts. It shows us where our hearts are anchored. Are we waiting in patience? Joyful hope? Trust? Or is our waiting filled with anger? Or anxious desperation? Or despair? It’s easy to wait patiently, when the end is in sight, but what about when the road is long? When it gets exhausting. When it’s lonely. In those times, it can be hard to stay expectant. Hard not to feel alone and abandoned by God.
For the past several weeks, the words of the song Take Courage (Bethel Music) have been playing over and over in my head. These words, especially the words in the chorus, caught my attention when I heard them and what an encouragement they have become.
Slow down, take time
Breath in He said
He’d reveal what’s to come
The thoughts in His mind
Always higher than mine
He’ll reveal all to comeTake courage my heart
Stay steadfast my soul
He’s in the waiting
He’s in the waiting
Hold onto your hope
As your triumph unfolds
He’s never failing
He’s never failingSing praise my soul
Find strength in joy
Let His Words lead you on
Do not forget His great faithfulness
He’ll finish all He’s begun
He is in the waiting. That is what I have discovered. We are not alone. He is in the waiting. He is leading, guiding, upholding, and sharing in the waiting. Even in the silence. Even when it’s hard. Even through the oceans of tears we have already shed on this journey. Right there. In the midst – just as He is in the midst of the storms, He is in the midst of the stillness. And that truth has begun to change the way I wait. Before waiting was the anxious kind, filled with fearful thoughts and restless, sleepless nights. Now I have begun the practice of waiting on God, rather than just for my circumstances to change. Learning to be still and live present while in the midst of waiting.
David wrote in Psalm 27:14 “Wait for and confidently expect the Lord; Be strong and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for and confidently expect the Lord” (AMP). The Message translation puts it “Stay with God”.
In Psalm 130:5 he says, “I wait [patiently] for the Lord, my soul [expectantly] waits, And in His word do I hope.”
The Hebrew word “wait” here is the word “qavah” meaning “to bind together; to expect”. I have discovered that my waiting should never be passive. It’s not just waiting for something to happen. It’s waiting on Him. It’s a tied-togetherness with Him. It’s an active waiting – in expectation of His goodness. Of His faithfulness. It’s waiting in pursuit of Him. It’s a wait of communion and discovery. It’s one of trust. It’s one filled with hope. One of remaining in the Presence of the One who knows us best and finding courage there; of being still and really knowing that He is God.
That doesn’t mean that I’ve got it all figured out. That I don’t still struggle with the rising fear. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t the really frustrating days and filled with the challenges that are a part of walking this road we’ve been called to. But it does mean I’ve have stopped questioning where God is in all of this. It does mean that I have stopped trying to “rush” things along because I think my timeline is better. I does mean that instead of resisting or just surviving where we are, I am now daily trying to see what there is for me to learn here in this place of waiting and relying on a strength that’s not mine to see me through it.
So, we wait, but not just for a case worker to sign off on something or the decision of a judge in a courtroom. We wait on Him. Wait, hoping that I will someday see our Little Gift’s tiny feet fill a man’s shoes. Hoping to see him grow big enough to wrestle with his brothers or work alongside his daddy in the yard. Hoping to see my 3 boys grow up together, with an unbreakable bond of brotherhood and friendship. Hoping, but surrendering to the will of my Father and his. Knowing that what I hope for may be different than what His plan is. It might be long, but it can be both a time of living and of learning to rest. And while it is incredibly hard and I don’t always understand why things happen the way they do, I will embrace the waiting. Because He is in the waiting and He never fails. And I can rest in that.
~ Hope and waiting go hand in hand. To be finished waiting is to have lost hope; it means you believe there is nothing up ahead worth waiting for. ~
But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait eagerly for it with patience and composure. ~ Romans 8:25 (AMP)
Of Shattered Things 