For the last few weeks I’ve not been picturing my girls or wondering their whereabouts as much as I was before, if at all. Some of it may be my subconscious defenses, as our adoption hangs in suspension (along with many other details in our life). As I type a picture pops into my head of mobile hanging above me with all the major variables of our lives (house, career, family) just teetering flippantly.
A very natural response of the human heart to uncertainty is numbness. At least that’s the response of this human heart. Hope in overall outlook and in prayer takes work and sometimes I just don’t feel like working anymore. My stubborn mind doesn’t always want to be reoriented towards the thoughts of God and I can sometimes just settle for soaking in a big bathtub of nothingness (more appropriately called “self pity”).
But, today, after having my own church service in my Sunday best: foot duvet’s (Restoration Hardware’s name for really soft, furry slippers), sweatpants, and a sweatshirt that are starting to feel like my Christmas-break uniform, my longing returns.
This isn’t a longing to be a mom.
It’s Him. I just want to be near Him. I don’t want to move from this moment where His presence is so near.
And I want that for our girls too. More than anything else, this is what I want for them.
God, in their brokenness and destitution, would you take their little hearts and open them up to You?
Speak to them God. Interrupt their lives with the overwhelming sense of your love. Be a Daddy to them. Take their pain and, in exchange, would you give them as much of yourself as their minds and hearts can comprehend.
Give them a desire, too, like mine … to just be near You.
God, would you let them hear your heartbeat? In their darkness, would you whisper to them your secrets? Would you let them see a side of you that only their pain allows?
God promises to be a father to the fatherless and the anxious part of me that wants to get them into this home and under our roof so that they can be safe forgets who’s really taking care of them. And the household that God runs is upside-down from the one I can so easily cling to … what’s lacking in the physical only opens the door for abundance in the spiritual. As my grid for life and the “American dream” continues to change, I can’t wait to see how He takes these lives marked by deficiency and makes them into something glorious.
