Easter 2011

Easter Sunday was beautiful! We had a wonderful week leading up to it, and I think each of us in our family came to a new level of understanding our salvation through Christ during this year’s meditations and celebrations of his death and resurrection. It was a precious time.

::our little family on Easter morning::

It was also a bittersweet day.  It was the first big holiday since we’ve known about the boys, and we felt their absence so keenly.  We just miss them.  So. Very. Much.

In all honesty though, it wasn’t just Easter.  Every day that we’ve known about them, every day  since we set our hearts on them, the ache in my heart for them has grown.  Many days the last several weeks it has mounted to a full-on throb, and feels almost unbearable.

I reached a breaking point one day 2 weeks ago and called a sweet veteran adoptive mom who had offered to be a listening ear when I needed it.  Almost as soon as we got on the phone I just broke down.

How do you wait well? I wanted to know.  It’s nothing like it was waiting for our girls to be born – when I knew they were safe and growing, and it was even good for them to continue to be in the womb.  How am I supposed to be ok with my boys being in an orphanage across the world, and the only thing keeping us from bringing them home is a bunch of paperwork and waiting in line.  I told her it wasn’t that I didn’t feel hopeful – I feel very hopeful that they will come home.  It’s more the devastation of missing these precious moments with them.  The devastation that as every day goes by that they are not here with their forever family, their little hearts learn a little bit more to put up walls and not attach and trust.

The other thing that drives me crazy about all this is the constant barrage of thoughts like, Well, you asked for this! You knew what you were getting into. Or, Seriously?! you’re complaining about your wait?  People wait years to get to where you’ve gotten in the process.  Just be thankful!

My dear friend who listened so well, so empathetically and sympathetically, also spoke sweet truth to my heart. She told me that, yes, we have had a quick process and yes, we did have some idea of what we were getting into.  But that doesn’t make the process easy.  No matter how smooth a process goes, adoption is a severe mercy on so many levels and there is a lot of pain involved. The pain we feel as we wait is normal, and also good. Adoption comes with a cost – it’s cost gives it great value and add to the glory of it all.  Just think of our heavenly adoption!

The other thing she said that I have had to remind myself of a million times since is this:  You have to choose to believe that God is not waiting on Ethiopian courts and paperwork processing.  He is working ALL THINGS for the good of his own – which is both you AND your boys. It’s not something I don’t know, but honestly, I don’t always believe it in my heart of hearts as we wait.  After all, the whole reason we’re adopting is to get these boys OUT of this life of orphans.  How can it be good for them to be there longer?  It’s a mystery. I don’t understand it all.

And that was another sweet reminder on Easter.  I imagine my own expectation and hope coupled with the major disappointment I feel every day as I go to bed still not knowing our court date, and I know it is only a fraction of what the disciples felt with the finality of the stone rolling into place after Jesus’ beaten and dead body was laid in the tomb.  I know they thought like I do, “How can this be good?? How can this be part of the plan??”

I am so thankful to know the end of that story, and that the Author of it is writing ours and Jonathan and David’s as well.  The God who has the power to take the worst possible event in all of human history and make it the most glorious, the most miraculous, the most blessed – surely he can work good from the sadness that is my boys’ story right now.  He who makes beautiful things out of dust, can certainly make beauty from this horrible wait, and ultimately sons from orphans – that’s what he’s in the business of doing anyway, isn’t it?  That’s what the victory that blessed first Easter morn made possible.

So we’re still here waiting.  Tearfully trusting.  Hurting with great hope.  It’s a moment by moment battle, and some days are better than others.

Today Karyn sent us this sweet reminder that I’ve been chewing on in light of all this:

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” (Ephes. 3:20-21)

There’s is so much promise wrapped into those 2 verses and I’m fighting to stand on those promises.  In this shaky, uncertain process that is adoption – that is LIFE on this side of heaven – there is no where else to stand.

Tags: adoption