"I could not imagine that the future I was walking toward could compare in any way to the past that I was leaving behind." Nelson Mandela
This hits me in two separate spaces of my soul. The first, a void created by my inability to...maybe sacrifice my other children? ...maybe inability to...I don't know...if I knew...it wouldn't be a void. There'd be a sixth child still asleep in his bed as I typed. But there isn't. And I think of him always. How can you express that to a child you've failed? You can't. You just help the other adults who are picking up the pieces. I can admit that I did not break this child. And, by God's grace, I have watched him heal in tremendous ways. But I have added to some of the pieces on the floor that is his life. And I wish I could help him to see that the future with his possible new forever family has all the potential in the world to be so much brighter than all the combined safe-happy-moments he experienced with us. Love. It's the seed I planted. Now, it's time for someone else to tend the field and I pray to harvest the crop that should be a life well lived.
The second breath-holding-realization from that quote has been forming for quite some time. All the efforts and love and pain and joy and tears and work I have put into the last year and a half to end with yet STILL a disrupted adoption...has left me really questioning. What big miracle am I really asking for? A child to heal? to function in society? is God really asking me to sacrifice even more of my other children's safety and sanity? like...really????? am I depending too much on my own strength?? bc I surely haven't FELT strong. or wise. or holy. or brave. or heroic. And if all this is true...and let's add the kicker here...our littles could be going home in three months despite allllllllllll the reasons everyone, save the main decision maker, can see...has had me truly asking...yelling...threatening...so what if You are real?? Why on Earth would I want to serve a God who allows such things. I am not asking for massive freedom-of-will miracles to be performed. I'm asking for one child's heart to settle and accept love...and then for the judge to simply make a wise decision based on ALL the facts and recommendations of EVERYONE involved. I have done all the hard work, made all the sacrifices, given Him all the credit. It's a formula...last I checked. You know....Job loses it all but then gets like more and better in the end...right????????
Hmph. I've always struggled with the first half of that story. LOSING IT ALL. I had a miscarriage. I didn't want MORE or BETTER...I freaking wanted my baby. life. a life I'd had dreamed of since I was 4. And then one day---I was holding J-bob (after the miscarriage) and I could really look at him and say...it was worth it. I am thankful...because God's plan was better than mine. {And I could actually say that without a bitter acid reaching the back of my tightened throat}
Today my five children and I began reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and I was literally crying from laughing so hard at the Herdman's one-eyed cat. Of course, my belly laugh led to the kid's belly laugh. And then we did a few days of our advent reading (one kinda loses a week or so when one packs a child up AND has court for the others in the same 7 day stretch...I share the pathetic failings bc it's taken 10 years of actual Motherhood to even make it past day 3 on an advent reading...and who am I kidding...as a very.bad.Christian. I didn't really even know said readings and Jesse Tree things even existed until about 3 years ago...so don't go thinking high of me...oh wait...I just admitted to thinking the book of Job was a magic formula of pain begetting more and better...HA...yeah, no pedal-stools here).
What was I on about bf that train-wreck of ADD just hit??? OH! laughing and advent. We prayed over our first-scented-candle-in-like-7-years and tonight was Mermaid's night to blow it out and make a wish (prayer)...throw me a bone...we don't do Santa...I think blowing out candles and trusting those unspoken thoughts are floating up to God in the smoke is a beautiful and magical thing. And I realized...that "I could not imagine that the future I was walking toward could compare
in any way to the past that I was leaving behind," or in my specific case...present...but it can. And He is good. And I don't even have to know the future or like what He is saying, not saying, doing, or not doing. I simply have to just keep clinging to Him (even if I am kicking and screaming) because...I have tried to do this life without Him...I have tried being angry and resentful and pretend I don't want to serve...but.I.can't. Because I love Him...dearly. And I trust Him...dearly. And He knows that terrifies me. And that trusting that He loves my children (borrowed, middle, or forever) is even more terrifying.
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