The Slow Slow and the Fast Fast

Saturday I sat in my new abode with my home study social worker talking adoption. Talking parenting styles and personality. Talking height and weight (that's right, for a reason unknown to my social worker, my height and weight bear relevance on whether or not I'm a fit parent).

I answered questions one by one and tried to be as clear and straightforward as I could.

Praying and hoping.

We got to the end and I hazarded the question pulsing in my brain: Am I allowed to ask? And if I'm allowed to ask, am I approved to adopt? Do you think I will be a fit parent?

She laughed and told me not to worry. If she'd been concerned about anything, she would have let me know. She would have asked more questions and asked for clarity. No, you're good. Just need time to prepare the report now.

Whew.

I mean, I thought it was going well. I thought the answer was yes. I thought when she said things like "I bet you can't wait to have her home" it was a good sign. But still there's that little bit of doubt tugging at you. That little bit of fear. That little gnawing feeling you can't let go of. And I stared at Hannah's pictures newly spread all over my new home, and I thought and I prayed, "Please, Lord. Please."

***

There's the slow parts and then there's the fast parts of adoption.


Most is slow. Most is patience and waiting, but every once in a while everything starts to move very fast. It's thrilling and terrifying. Exciting and panicky. Joyous and overwhelming.

It's like the amusement park ride you wait in line hours for for a few moments of thrilling terror.

You draw closer to the front of the queue and you can feel the excitement begin to grow. Then you're buckling in and you can't believe you've finally made it to this point, and you're fearful of the drops and speed and twists and turns ahead. You wonder if you can actually make it through this ride. Might it possibly be too much for you? But there's no way you're backing out and no way you're getting off the ride. Not now. This is what you've been waiting for.

The last week was fast, fast.

Pulling together all the final documents, unpacking and trying to make my new place look as presentable as possible, preparing my heart and mind for the home visit.

On the other side of Saturday, all still feels fast, but I can see us coasting into the ride exit. Home study ride almost at an end. Time to stand in the queue for the dossier ride.

I must admit I love the riding part, but I am not so great at the queuing part.

Yet again back to perseverance and patience.


And I think of how Hannah* is being patient. Patient and praying and trusting every day God will answer her prayers for a "new family," a family of her very own.


I think of how we've talked about God looking for the right family for her and how the right family is better than any family.

***

I am so thankful for a few weeks of fast. I needed the past few weeks to keep me going and to buoy my spirits. I needed for everything to move forward one giant leap so I won't get discouraged by the tiny baby steps.

I needed to be on the ride. I needed the wind in my face and my stomach rising up into my chest and then dropping out of my body. I needed my body to be twisted and torqued. I needed a big something to help me remember the importance and the necessity of the small somethings.

There's more slow ahead and more fast. And hopefully because of the last few weeks I'm a little more prepared, a little more ready for slow.


*Hannah is a pseudonym. In order to protect her identity until she is fully and legally mine, I use "Hannah" in all online activity regarding my someday daughter and her adoption.
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Please consider supporting Hannah's adoption by visiting the Just Love Coffee website and purchasing great, fair trade coffee through our storefront.

Read more about our adoption story:

Hannah's Prayer
Telling Hannah
Far, Far Away
Superfluous Smoke Detectors and All

A Room of Her Own

It's the How You Get There

I've been wanting to write another post about perseverance for a few weeks now, but I just haven't been able to. (I know...there's a really good joke in there somewhere.)

I guess the problem is perseverance is such a ridiculously hard thing to put into words.

We all know what it is. We all know it's pushing through and keeping on keeping on and all those cliches, but taking it past the cliches to a deeper more robust meaning--the deeper more robust meaning we all know it has--well, I've found it's just plain difficult.

Checking into what those really intelligent, New Testament, Jesus follower types said, did not clear up the matter for me:

Paul said of perseverance that "sufferings" produce it and it in turn produces "character" and "hope" (Romans 5:3-4).

James said it was not only suffering but trials and faith testings that produce it. And then goes on to say perseverance has a work to "finish" so we can be "mature" and "complete" (James 1:2-4).

And Peter, he said we add it to self-control which was added to knowledge which was added to goodness which was added to faith. After all those first sums, we're then to add godliness to perseverance and to godliness mutual affection and to mutual affection love (2 Peter 1:5-7).


Um, guys...what the heck? Could you be about as clear as mud? I got lost somewhere in the causation and found myself in the effect and I was actually looking for the what it looks like and the how you do it?

Why perseverance?

Because perseverance is this year's theme. It's the character trait I said at the beginning of the year I wanted most to pursue and learn about and become more of.

And, um, well, that was obviously a silly thing to ask God to teach me about.

Okay, maybe not a silly thing because I really do want to be a person whose known for her perseverance. But as usual with my yearly themes I think I know at the beginning of the year how those lessons will play out, and they never play out the way I think they will.

It seemed appropriate at the time. After all, pursuing adopting Hannah seemed like it would be a really good opportunity to learn about perseverance--and it has been. But the hoops I've jumped through and the hoops I'm jumping through and the hoops I see coming up next weren't the expected hoops. Higher and fierier and turned at odd angles and just plain hard to jump through without a stepladder and a few additional acrobats on hand.

I keep finding myself throwing my head back, looking up in the sky and saying to the cosmos, "Seriously, God. I mean seriously?"

There's been everything from the utter ridiculous to the ire-inspiring to the just plain annoying to the just try and tell me I can't.

A year and a half in, I truthfully feel I know less about persevering than when I began. Which does two things to me:


It makes me want to huff and puff and whine a bit more.


And it makes me want to go all linebacker and do whatever it takes to sack the quarterback.

About a month ago, I took a look at the ever-increasing pile of waist yarn from various projects over the years, and I decided I really needed to do something about it before I bought any new yarn.

Want the pattern? You can find it here.

I found a pattern for one of those handy, reusable grocery bags and decided this would be the perfect project. Recycling yarn and avoiding using up precious oil resources on plastic bags--two birds, one stone--somebody give me a pat on the back. And bonus, it was a knit pattern rather than a crochet pattern so I'd get to work on my new hobby and further develop my skills.

That bonus turned out to be a bigger bonus than I planned. Lots of unraveling. Lots of starting over. Lots and lots of re-winding balls of yarn and untangling knots.

In the end, I have a lumpy, over-sized bag because I used too weighty of a yarn--not what the pattern called for. It looks alright, but I'll never be able to use it for groceries because it's way too big.

No doubt there was a lot of perseverance that went into it--a lot of unraveling and re-knitting. A lot.

But the piece is not what I envisioned. It's not the perfectly cute bag from the picture on the pattern and it does not serve the purpose it was designed to serve. I'm sure I'll find some other purpose for it or I'll give it to someone who will, but it doesn't change the slight irk of having it not be what I envisioned.

But I persevered.

I suppose, maybe after all, I'm learning perseverance is less about the getting there and more about the how you get there--the what kind of person are you while you're pressing through.

Are you a whiner? A moper? An overzealous Pollyanna? A what will be will be sort? A got to do it all yourselfer? A do it all for me sort? An ignorer? An eat a lot or shopping spree or an over-exerciser kind?

Do others know you for persevering well--for showing character and hope and godliness and mutual affection and love?

I hope others are seeing in me the latter more often than the former options, but I know I've been those too. And I know I will be those again and again this year and in years to come.

I really want persevering to be about the end goal. I want it to be about Hannah home forever, legally mine. And it is to an extent, but I'm finding perseverance is much more about the who I am in the middle of the persevering and the whose I am and the how I choose to reflect that to others.

I started a second bag this weekend with less weighty yarn. So far, I think this one will turn out closer to the original pattern and will serve the designed purpose. And I guess that's the other thing I'm learning, when we give up or don't get it quite right the first time, we can always start again.

Lessons in Perseverance

What I have figured out so far in my adoption journey is that adoption is a marathon and not a sprint. As with most things in life, I want it to be a sprint. I want to get to the finish line quickly, win the race and move on to the next race.

But the adoption journey is simply that—a journey. It is a step by step process with each step as necessary to the process as the last.

One of the first steps has been to find a home study agency in Texas to partner with my placement agency, Bethany Christian Services. Initially, it seemed an impossible task as Bethany requires a specific type of home study that few agencies in the country use. There were lots of dead ends before we finally came across Children’s Connections, Inc. who has one social worker in their state wide network who is trained in this particular type of home study.

The weeks of Google research, emails and phone calls were an exercise in faith for me. Praying to go back to Lubbock, feeling within my spirit that this was the right step, having that step affirmed by many others—but not being able to see a clear path forward. Either the mountain had to be moved or I did.

Coming up against the mountain drove me to dig deep into the Lord—digging deep into the faith reservoir in the depths of my heart. There were days that the mountain seemed impossible to move, and I wondered about making plans to move myself instead—to move to Colorado where Bethany has offices and could do the home study in house. But I kept digging deep.

I’m typically not a practitioner of “Bible roulette”. I think randomly opening the Bible and expecting a specific word from God wherever you land is a dangerous game that sets up all sorts of expectations of what the Spirit may or may not be speaking. But during this waiting period, when asked at a devotional to pull two verses out of a bag, I had a clear Bible roulette moment, drawing Psalm 62:8 and Philippians 4:6-7.

Now, I don’t think that either of those verses promised that everything would work out, that we would find a home study agency in Texas, and that all would go perfectly according to plan. But I do think that I needed a reminder to trust in the Lord and to continue in prayer and petition before Him. I needed the encouragement to keep digging deep.

With Children’s Connections now on board and the beginnings of the paperwork being filled in, I feel assured that this was one step in a series of steps that will require waiting and digging deep. I’m certain that through this journey I am going to learn more about perseverance than I have on any previous journey. And I’m fairly confident that there will be many times that I will grow impatient and forget about waiting on the Lord and digging deep.

Lessons in perseverance are some of those lessons that we have to learn and relearn over a lifetime, and I think we never learn them perfectly. But I’m thankful for a patient Father who when we fail to persevere, catches us in our stumble and reminds us to keep digging deep.