On Number Six, and Things I Don’t Understand

God used the sorrow and loss of two failed pregnancies to grow our desire for adoption and to expand our compassion for children living beyond the loss of their first parents. So when Dustin and I made the decision to forgo birthing more children adoption wasn’t our Plan B. My husband and I were parents missing some kids, and some kids were missing parents. Adoption made sense.

When God clearly revealed to us His timing and heart for the matter, my response was, “Okay God, I’m down with this plan. I don’t like the loss portion of the scenario on both sides, but I believe in Your redemption.”

After that, our family followed in faith on a whirlwind adventure spanning four years and two separate adoptions from Ethiopia.

It’s funny how sometimes we think we know what the Lord is up to. As God’s plans unfolded I believed I recognized a pattern, that I understood. I thought I had Him pegged — two failed pregnancies, two adoptions.

Restoration for what was lost.

…Restoration for what was lost?

For who? Me and Dustin? In the form of the intense and long-lasting battle to try to mend wounds we didn’t create, full of sacrifice and payment for injustices we didn’t perpetrate. The boys? In the form of trauma, hurt, grief, loss and anger on a scale unimaginable.

Sometimes, guiltily, I dream of skipping all the crap, the pain, the sacrifice, the personal failures involved with this brand of restoration – a get out of jail free card.  ”Is this your idea of restoration? No more, God. Just no!”

James 1:17 (NIV) – Every good and perfect gift is from above coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights who does not change like shifting shadows

In the middle of the night, the Spirit awakened me and whispered.

How can I this be? We made a decision, said yes to other things, difficult things. I struggled and wondered why, and how I could possibly manage.

At dawn, two weeks before my husband’s scheduled vasectomy, the positive pregnancy test confirmed what I had already learned to embrace, what the Spirit told me.

We know how babies happen, but we don’t really know how this one did. There’s mystery involved.

Sometimes I think I can recognize blessings and curses, but then the line blurs. The timing always feels wrong when trials become blessings. Receiving good gifts means being humbled and stretched and tested even more. And what is redeemed still looks messy. And what has been restored is sometimes unrecognizable.

I think about the unexpected happiness we’ve also experienced, the many blessings, and the unmerited favor. I think about what life would be like if I had truly said no, and the giant hole the boys’s absence would have left in our family. I think about Jonas and Abrham’s first mothers, who would have given anything to stand in my shoes. Even on the bad days.

Almost 37 weeks ago I realized I know nothing.

But new life is blossoming. A little girl is coming.