Waiting and Wrestling (Foster/Adopt Reflections)

This may never see the light of day, but I wanted to pour this out somewhere.

This waiting. It’s really something like I’ve never done before.

It’s not just waiting.  It’s that while I’m waiting I am also locked in a complicated battle, emotionally and spiritually.

The waiting gives a person lots of time to do a lot of soul-searching, and actually forces it upon you.

I lie awake late into the night wrestling.

I’m wrestling in prayer for a child I have never met.  For whomever my son or daughter is, right this moment.  For whomever is taking care of my child while I am waiting.  For whomever brought my child into the world, regardless of why they are no longer raising him/her.  For whomever that child is loving, or leaving behind, or afraid of, or living with, or hoping to find.  For the workers who are trying to make the best decisions for all of us without knowing the future.

Those might be obvious.

But the wrestling that goes on with my own self is stranger.

I want this child to walk through my door tomorrow.  But that’s not in anyone’s best interest.

I want to feel pride that I can parent “better” than my child’s birth family.  That’s horrifically unfair and inaccurate.

I want to send 2879234 emails to my adoption worker, checking on the status of our license, checking in on children, badgering her to work faster.  This is not appropriate.

I want to daydream and plan and start setting up a room and making phone calls about appointments and school, to start buying supplies and planning for a family of 5.  But this is getting ahead of myself, assuming that God’s plan is the same as my plan, and could lead to major disappointment.

I want to focus all of my late-night wrestles on a particular child that I’ve fallen in love with.  I want to think of that child as mine to love, mine to raise… I want to be that child’s mother.  But I have no reason to think that I will  be matched with that child.

I want to be more stoic, and chastise myself for allowing my heart and intuition to zone in on a child so quickly in the process, to guard myself from the probable loss of a child I didn’t have the right to miss.  But that’s going against my nature.

It’s difficult to realize my human weakness in all of this.  That I have absolutely no control over how my family is going to evolve.  That no matter how badly I might want something, I cannot be certain of anything.

But in actuality, this is exactly the same as every other mountain to climb in life.  Unable to see the other side, no idea if emotion is warranted, no way to predict what comes next.  No certainty of what God has planned.  No clue if my will aligns with His.

And I wonder if I’m ready.  I wonder if I jumped in too fast.  If the Lord is making me wait because I am somehow not yet fit to parent you.

But who’s ever ready?  You weren’t ready.  I’m probably not ready.  And it’s okay.  What’s going to happen is we’re going to be a little bit of a mess, but we’re going to be together.  I’m sure I will disappoint you and break some promises and do and say the wrong things.  But I love you, and it’s going to be okay.