He Takes Away

After my last post, I was feeling a bit silly for complaining about some pretty petty obstacles being tossed our direction.  I knew those minor challenges were part of a bigger plan to derail our obedience, though, so I wanted to call a spade a spade.  This week, I feel less petty about calling foul.  

Generally speaking, ours is not a family of planners.  I used to be one myself, but my control gene was silenced over years of marriage and then stomped to death once I became a mom.  It doesn't happen to everyone; that's just my story.  

The events of the past week have reminded me how much I still cling to my plans.  We're still experiencing trials here, as we were last week.  But this week, it's been turned up a notch.  


You see, very shortly after we began our adoption process, we found out that I was pregnant.  With a very long awaited, very wanted, very prayed for baby.  Having lost our baby just four months earlier with a first-trimester miscarriage, my excitement was tempered.  There was no excited announcement to everyone including the lady checking us out at Wal-Mart.  This fallen world had stolen some of my joy in this happy turn of events.  


I was blessed beyond my wildest imagination, and no one knew.  Not only that, but finding out that I was pregnant just after paying our adoption application fee left me feeling conflicted, and feeling guilty for feeling conflicted.  It added a whole new layer of fear also.  Fear of what people would think of our family.  Fear that we would not find the financial support we need to adopt, because people would assume that we didn't need the money or shouldn't be adopting anyway if we were having another child on our own.  Fear that the prevailing world view about children as a luxury as opposed to a blessing would affect how our family was perceived and whether we would raise the support we need.  


This is my confession.  My fear betrayed some idols I was worshiping:  a healthy pregnancy, the health of my children, the blessing of more children, avoiding heartache, and what people think.  I've read that Satan dances when God's people fear things other than God.  I practically threw him a party.  


This past Sunday night, after we sent off the last of our small group, one of my idols failed me.  This was not a healthy pregnancy.  And this week, we have lost our fifth child.  Since the wound is still open, the reality that two fifths of my children are awaiting me in heaven has yet to sink in.  I expect I'll write more on that another time.  


So how is this relevant to our adoption?  Well, in several ways.  But today, I've been thinking about the mother whose child will be mine, assuming she is alive to make the gut wrenching, selfless decision to give up her baby.  She too will lose her child for reasons outside of her control.  Her heart will break.  And she will wonder what she has missed out on.  


We've been praying for months for our new daughter and sister.  But we must pray for her family as well.  That they would receive comfort in knowing that their child is going to a place where she will be loved and cared for, and where she might know the hope that we know.  I realize I will be reunited with my lost children, and that I will have the rest of eternity to know them.  I know that this separation is painful but temporary and that they are safe.  


But that mother's separation may not be temporary.  I must pray that both my adopted child and her biological family would come to know my Lord and Savior, that they will hear and believe the Truth.  I must plead that the pain of separation they know in this world will likewise be temporary, and that we will have an eternity to marvel at the amazing plan that unfolded in our lives to bring us back together.  


~Katie