Well, I think I've been avoiding a few things.
I've been avoiding writing any news because I wanted to write with good news. And it just hasn't come.
I've been avoiding writing because it's February. This month marks 3 years since Ben & I chose to start a journey of growing our family. A journey we NEVER could have predicted would look like this 3 years later. While the ups & downs of the infertility journey have somewhat subsided - each month still hurts a little. Pregnancy announcements still hurt. Growing bellies are joy for their owners - yet for me, painful reminders at the failings of my own body. And knowing it's been 3 years is simply surreal. Infertility and adoption are not separate. Infertility and parenthood will not be separate. There are no cures, no answers, no easy fixes for it. It is a journey we may walk every day for the rest of our lives. While I'm not in the same place in the infertility journey I was a year ago (PRAISE JESUS, He's already worked on healing so much with this, helping me to grieve so much), the reality is that it's still a journey we continue to be on.
But above all else - I've been avoiding the humble reality of facing truth in lack of trust. The day in December I last posted, my world felt like it fell apart. About a month later, our agency asked us to complete additional steps - hard steps - in order to reconsider their decision of not approving us in December, and the world crumbled a little more. Both of those moments should have been the first moment my heart, soul, mind, spirit, and arms reached out to Jesus and allowed trust and peace to flood my entire being. Instead, I panicked. I hurt. I cried. I worried. I attempted to exert any control I thought I could. And the two months since that day have been...well...indescribable.
Proverbs 13:12 - "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life." This whole journey has felt like hope deferred. But two months ago, fleshly hope was tangible. This is why I feel like my heart hurts so much in this journey, when that wonderful outcome of approval slipped away.
However, Rom 5:3-5 - "Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured our into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." This is what I WANT to feel in my heart, and humbly ask you to help me ask Jesus for this to become my everyday reality. To move from feeling like adoption "will be" an amazing road once there's resolution, and instead feel like adoption "IS" an amazing road, if not for any other reason than this is where God has us. To hope now because Christ died on the cross and nothing else changes that. And to hope forward, to the wonderful, handmade, blessing of a child that God will place into our family.
All this to say - there's no news yet. And my heart is in a state of flux, sometimes human and worrying and hurting, sometimes having brief glimpses of hope, faith, and trust.
