One of the ways I like to remember years past is by using the Timehop app on my phone. Most days it is fun to see what we were doing as a family 1, 2, 3 ... 7 years ago. It is fun to see how much my babies have grown into amazing young ladies.
However, the Timehop app can also offer painfully brutal reminders of how time has seemingly stood still in regards to our adoption process. While time seems to be flying watching my two lovely ladies grow up, it also seems frozen waiting for the day I get to be mommy to two or three more children I have yet to meet.
Today my Timehop reminded me Easter was on April 5th last year. With that, it showed me a text exchange I had with my dad where he talked about waving at my other kiddos as they passed the DR on their cruise and he hoped they would be home by next Easter. That was Easter 2015.
Easter 2016 has come and gone and my arms ache to hug my children I so desperately long for. Each New Year's Eve, Ben and I pray with hopeful hearts the incoming year will be THE year we meet our future children. We cling to John 14:18 "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you."
And yet, time stands still. March 17th, we got a phone call from our agency. When the phone call came through, I was teaching so it went to voicemail. I remember heading to lunch and quickly checking my phone and discovering we had a voicemail from our social worker. I began to listen to the voicemail while making a few quick copies in the copy room - hopeful for progress in the adoption.
Shortly after our dossier approval, we found out the director of the Central Authority for adoptions (CONANI) in the DR has resigned. While we knew this would been a bit of delay in our journey, we were hopeful because the interim director just so happened to have a good connection with our agency. We were hopeful this would be just a minor hiccup along the way.
The March 17th voicemail knocked the wind out of our sails. Since Christmas we hadn't really been given any updates, but we just assumed it was due to the director changes and coming off of the Christmas season. What we learned in that voicemail was that the interim director had gotten married and left the area - leaving our agency without a contact with CONANI and essentially putting our adoption process on hold.
It has officially been over four years since we began this adoption journey. More than four years since I began this blog and anticipated the journey to be a "two to four year process". My now big kids were 1 and 4 when we started on this journey. I don't think my now five year old remembers a time in her life we weren't in the adoption process.
So much has changed in that time and yet, time also seems to have stood still. The only thing I can do is to cling to God and His timing to get me through. As a dear friend who is all too familiar with my current place in our adoption journey said to me as I shared in my desperation, "some days all you want to do is hide under a blanket." My children - ALL of my children - need me to keep hoping. For now, I have to fight to hope and trust in God's plans for my family.
When times stands still, I hope in Him.
24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
~Romans 8:24-28
No comments:
Post a Comment