"It's your breath in our lungs, So we pour out our praise to You only!" I could feel the tears building and then spilling out of my eyes. I was in a state of just being so overwhelmed by the goodness of God.
You see, this past year has been ROUGH on me and my family. We pursued another adoption because I so badly wanted another child and kept insisting that I was right. We had a failed adoption, and somehow in my own arrogance I did not consider that that was the Lord slamming shut a door that I shouldn't have even opened to begin with (and lemme just say, when you start praying for the Lord to open the doors that should be opened and slam shut the doors that he doesn't want you to walk through, you had better be ready to follow that path - even when it's uncomfortable). For a while, that was a vacant prayer for me.
The latter half of 2019 was a whirlwind of arguments, tears, frustrations, and hurt feelings. Rebekah told me she felt like we should take a break from our adoption, and I said over and over that I didn't feel like we should stop right now, that I felt like adoption again was what God had called us to, and that we just needed to put our heads down and go with it (because isn't that what any task-oriented person does, anyway?). I was miserable. She was miserable. Our home was miserable. But God. In all of his glory and splendor, he saw fit to be gracious to us in our misery. Finally in the last week of December, I admitted that I was wrong and had been for some time. We pressed pause on adoption round two, meaning we will not actively show our profile to birth mothers again for a while.
I don't know what that looks like (and boy, if that's not the scariest thing I've said this month, I don't know what is!) or how long this will play out. I don't know if we will even start again. I told my therapist recently that if we actually stop and HWD is our only permanent child, the hardest part for me will be admitting I was wrong. She asked why, and I said, "I'm a 1! I have to be right. Rightness is at the core of my being!" And to be completely transparent, admitting I was wrong was one of the hardest parts of sending that email to our social worker.
So here we are on the other side of this. Can I just tell you that there has been a true peace and joy in our home these last 19 days? It's amazing how that oppression just leaves when you finally stop following your own will and follow the Lord's leading. There is joy in our home again. There is peace in our relationship again. We laugh in our home again. For those who missed our wonderful story of furniture shopping, here's the nutshell version - We found a bed we both liked on clearance but didn't ask what size it was. I went back midweek and bought it so we could pick it up yesterday. We get home and set it up, and guess what? IT'S THE WRONG SIZE! Y'all I kid you not. We thought it was a queen, but alas, it's the king we've always kind of wanted but didn't have the mattress for. And since the bed was on clearance, it's no backsies! [We do plan on getting the right size mattress sooner rather than later, for those who are concerned.] But y'all, we laughed and laughed and laughed about this bed all day. We were on the way to dinner last night, and Rebekah said, "Ya know what? We laughed today for the first time in months. You didn't immediately go to that beating yourself up place and thinking you're the worst. You didn't blame anyone. We just laughed about it." And there was so much beauty, joy, and healing in that moment. It was truly a day that was full of love and laughter, over something as small as a bed. Or as large as the wrong sized bed, I guess.
So maybe that was why I found myself in tears this morning as we worshipped. I truly felt peace for the first time in a year. I let go go the pressure of having it all together. I let go of that image of what I thought my life would look like and the 2.5 kids with a white picket fence and a dog. I let go of myself and embraced the beauty of what God has given me - a beautiful wife, the most hilarious kid on the planet, a home to keep us safe and warm, a job that has brought opportunity for growth every day, a church family who just loves on us so very well, and really just the breath in my lungs. That is reason to praise, and for me, it was a reason to weep tears of joy.
May you all let go of the pieces of yourself that you are clinging to and let God do his work.
