In October 2008, my husband and I wanted to adopt. We discussed what kind of adoption we would pursue and International Adoption was where we headed. It didn’t take long though before all the stress of the adoption got to both of us. We attended a ton of classes, filed papers, answered everything about ourselves and waited. Then we had our homestudy interview in August 2009. I won’t go into the details of what happened, but our social worker was anything but nice and sweet. She did all but accuse us of child abuse (later I found out homeschool is a red flag for abuse..go figure) and we decided not to pursue the adoption.
My plans, my dreams, and my hard work seemed all in vain. It was over. People just thought I was fine. After all, we never had the kid in hand. We weren’t pregnant and lost a baby. It was just a dream. However, I was devastated. I walked around for months angry at the adoption system, the social worker, and I certainly did not understand why God had us go through all of that just to be left with nothing. We lost money. We lost time. We lost a dream.
Meanwhile, people I know are having children, nursing babies, and I’m left to wonder why God would do this. I’m not angry at God. I just don’t understand what purpose this was for. During the adoption process, people said some really mean things to us. Some of the things were “You can’t even handle the three kids you have” or “How are you even going to support another kid?” During the months when we were going to adopt, it didn’t bother me much, but after when everything fell apart, these words seemed to hit me like a ton of bricks. I figured maybe we weren’t good enough to adopt.
Since then, I decided I needed to keep my mind off of things so I started serving once a week in the Preschool class with 4 year olds at church. I tried to ignore the baby thing and I don’t read adoption blogs anymore. Recently, the news in Haiti has started me thinking again about our failed adoption plans and has made me sad. I can’t get away from the news of Haiti. It’s everywhere. So now, I’m back to where I started. “God why is this happening? I just wanted to move on with my life, but then there it is…all those bad feelings again.” God must have some reason for it. There must be some reason I am so sad when I see orphans. There must be a reason why I have this underlying feeling of “I wish I was in Haiti so I could help the orphans”. Why would God let me feel this way?
For the last year and a half, I have felt like “There must be more to life than this”. I realize the things I do - serving at church, homeschooling my children, being a mom, being a wife — those are all good things. They are serving and giving of myself, all by themselves. Sometimes I envy missionaries who are doing great things. They are in the midst of it. They are getting their hands dirty and doing it for God. Sometimes I feel like I could do so much more than what I’m doing. There is nothing wrong with what I do now, but is this all you have for me God?
Whatever you do, find the God-centered, Christ exalting, Bible saturated passion of your life, and find your way to say it, to live for it, and die for it and you will make a difference that lasts. You will not waste your life.” John Piper
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