The God Part

So. The God part of this story. This part is difficult to write because I'm still working my way back into being comfortable with being near Him. I'm anxious and that makes writing about Him like everything is OK and back to normal feel like a lie. So, just know as I say all of this it is true but it is still a struggle.

After Christmas I began to feel myself coming out of the fog I'd been in since before Thanksgiving. We had begun making changes and plans for changes and I was feeling good about it. Until, all of a sudden, I wasn't. We had decided to adopt, but we lacked focus and a specific plan. It became frustrating and unsettling every time we tried to talk about it, or any time I thought about it.

I knew why. He wasn't part of it. He wasn't part of it because I was unwilling to trust Him enough to allow Him to be. We had trusted Him with Lydia's life and He took her away from us. We trusted him with our plan for a family and were left now with aching hearts and empty arms. All I could think was, "If I trust Him now, what other hurt does He have in store?" Even His blessings can bring pain...how can I trust?

I was happy to have Him keep His hands out of our business and just let us take care of everything. Ha. As if He would do that.

I know too much to believe that any true, joyful and lasting thing could ever exist without Him. I was at an impasse. If I trust, I get hurt. If I don't trust, I get hurt.

Still unsure, we cautiously filled out the paperwork, believing that somehow the other pieces would start to come together. As I finished up the paperwork, we realized that in order to apply, we had to send in $25o for the application fee, which we were expecting, as well as $1750 for the home-study fee, which we were not expecting. I proceeded to have a significant meltdown. We don't have money for this. We have to get money before we can even START the process and I want to start now!

We furiously wrote down every cent we had in savings and figured out ways to pull money from every possible place to figure out how to make this payment. We sent e-mails and text messages to our friends who had adopted or were in the process of adopting asking for information on how to get money from people. We looked into adoption grants and loans. We (well, mostly me) were panicking.

Before we went to sleep that night, Micah got a message back from a friend whose family has recently adopted two little girls from Swaziland. His message was helpful and insightful and ended by assuring Micah that they found as they moved forward in His plan for their family, God provided. In my head, I snickered and said, "Yeah..except I'm not asking Him for anything."

We went to bed having a rough plan of how we could throw together a $2000 payment. We were disheartened, but we had a plan.

The next morning, I called a friend who was going to write a letter of recommendation for us and I needed to double check her address. She asked how the process had been going so far and I told her about the panic that had crashed down the night before and how we were scrambling to find $2000 to send in for our initial payment.

There was quiet for a second and then she said, "OK. I'll be over later today with a check."

Stunned, I tried my best to stammer out some kind of response.

"Yep. We'd already decided to give you between $2000 and $4000 and if you need the money now, I'm bringing it over."

I told her I'd have to call her back, hung up the phone, sat down on the floor and burst into tears.

We didn't ask Him for anything. We couldn't. He provided anyway. Our sweet friends who have walked this difficult road with us wanted to be a part of helping us build our family and this was their opportunity. They took it without hesitation.

We didn't ask Him. He provided anyway. I couldn't believe it. I called Micah in hysterics. I had nowhere in all of my categories and ideas about God to put this new information. I called my friend and tried to explain what I knew she already understood.

This made me want to try to trust again.

I can see it. He's bringing all the pieces together, even now as we move forward with unsure steps. He's saving the life of a sweet child from somewhere who needs to be loved and He's saving my life too. The beautiful thing is that I know He's not just doing this for me.

This gift, this adoption it's not just about me, just as Lydia's life and death was not just about me. There are pieces here that I don't see and don't understand but He's fitting them together, making the broken things into something beautiful.

I'd be lying if I said I've been able to keep this perspective in the past weeks. I've still had my doubt and my anger to reckon with. But I saw it. For a brief, glorious moment, I could see it.

Here We Go

This is now the fourth time I've started to write this entry. Every time I start I get utterly overwhelmed and can't finish. So, I've decided to break it down into parts. Today is part one and I'm just going to dive right in.

We've decided to adopt a baby. As I type this, there is an application and a check folded neatly into an addressed envelope, ready to be sent off to our adoption agency. Even now, weeks after we've decided to move forward, my heart races every time I think about it.

I've been going back and forth about writing about it here but I've finally come to a conclusion: We wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for Lydia. In a very real way, she is the inspiration. Until she was born, I never knew how much I loved being someone's mother and I never knew how amazing Micah was at being a father. Those were gifts she gave to us and now we feel like it's time to give that to someone else. This child, wherever they are now, will be loved exceedingly because Lydia taught us how to love. That is why I want to be able to talk about it here. Because whatever it is, she is a part of it still.

There are some incredible things that have already been happening in the wake of our decision but that will come in another post. Right now, we just want all of you who read and participate in our lives through this blog to know this. We would ask, as we have many times before, that you would lift us in prayer to the Lord as we begin to move forward.

Somewhere in the world (or maybe not even in the world yet) is a little person who is ours. We're ready to find them.

Winter River

On Christmas day I walked through the woods. I cried and talked aloud to Lydia, to Jesus, to the cosmos in general. I wrote Lydia's name in the snow. It made me feel like the earth and sky wouldn't forget her.

I came to the river. I leaned up against the boathouse dock, closed my eyes and listened. At first, all there was was the sound of my breathing. Then, from somewhere deep in the water I heard a whooshing sound. The river was groaning - singing. It was beautiful and made something in my heart vibrate.

Even while frozen, the river was alive and singing.

In months, when the spring comes, the river will thaw and will be again a hospitable place for things to live and grow. It will move, and the song once in the depths will rise again to the surface to be heard by any who pass by.

My soul is the winter river. There are layers of ice sheltering my heart. Still, quiet, frozen. But somewhere in the deep places is a groaning song. I am alive. I am singing. And the spring will come.

8 Months, 8 Days

Today our girl has been in heaven as many days as she was on the earth.

Tomorrow she will have been gone longer than she was here.

I don't even know what to do with that, but there it is.

Headbands

In an attempt to feel closer to my girl who feels so far away, I've been wearing her headbands as bracelets.


It makes me feel a little better. And then a little worse. And then a little better again. It's not her. But it's something of hers I can have with me all the time. It's my way to bring her with me.

A Timely Gift

Usually I love Christmas. It is my favorite time of year. We cut down a Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving and the house gets completely Christmased by the end of the day after Thanksgiving. Last year when Lydia was here was no exception. Difficult as it was, I wanted to fully enjoy the Christmas season with our little girl.

This year has been different. I've listened to no Christmas music, cut down no Christmas tree and decorated nothing. I couldn't bring myself to do it. I've been cursing at my television when cute family Christmas commercials come on and staring down anyone seeming remotely jolly about the Christmas season. But in the past couple days, the Christmasy feeling has been sneaking up on me. I start to think, "Well, maybe we'll get a tree this year and put up a few decorations" and then I start to get excited because I love the way our house looks when it's decorated. Then, as soon as I start to get a little happy, there's a catch in my throat. I don't want to celebrate this year without our girl. But then I do. But also I don't.

Today, we bit the bullet. We were out and about and decided to get a Christmas tree - just a small one that would require no re-arranging of the living room. It was simple, quick and easy. We got it home, got it set up and got the lights on it. I put up a few other decorations here and there and then got ready to do ornaments.

I wasn't looking forward to this. Tree decorating has always been a big thing for me. When I was growing up, it was a family event as we'd take out ornaments from years gone by...some really ugly ones we'd made, some with favorite cartoon characters. It's one of those traditions I'd always looked forward to doing with our children. Lydia, in the one Christmas she spent with us, managed to accrue several (I think six) ornaments. She should be here to put them up. The angry and sad was welling up, but decorating the tree was something I needed to do for myself, so I was going to do it.

Then, the doorbell rang. It was the mailman. He only rings the bell if there's something a little too big for the mailbox. There was a package for us. It was from the mother of a former student of mine. Inside was this beautiful thing.


It's a handmade, quilted ornament made from a pair of ladybug pajamas. These were some of our very favorite jammies that Lydia wore. Her friend Molly had a pair too.


I promptly burst into tears. Besides it being an incredibly sweet gesture and overwhelmingly thoughtful gift, it was something else altogether. Nothing could ever make Christmas without our girl OK. But this ornament, is a reminder to me. Despite my struggle to trust and follow Him now, the Savior of the world who came to die so I could live, He is still with me. He still sees me. He still loves me.

Trying to Find My Way

Wrestling. It’s what I’ve been doing a lot of lately. I’m working hard to try and reconcile two things that don’t seem to want to be reconciled. God is love, yes. But there’s this other thing that rises up in my mind that also says God is...not hate...not evil...but maybe pain? Suffering? Everywhere I look I see that the two are inextricably connected. There is no great suffering unless there is great love.

I suppose at its core, I’m asking the age old question - why is there suffering? More specifically, though, I want to know why I have to suffer. Not that I feel I should be an exception to pain, I just want to understand.

These things are ever and always in the forefront of my mind. Dwelling on them has caused me to ask questions I’ve never asked and doubt things I’ve always had faith in. Is God really real? If He is, is He really as good and loving as I’ve always believed Him to be ? What gives Him the right to do with me whatever He wants? How do I trust Him when all of my trust has been shattered?

Even if I can answer all of these questions there is one that is ever lingering - Do I even want to follow Him? Wouldn’t it be so much easier to pretend like He doesn’t exist? That all of my pain is the result of science gone wrong and freakish, random chance?

It seems like it would just be so much easier. So much less agonizing over things I cannot comprehend.

It is difficult because I feel, ultimately, that I know what my conclusion will be. If I want to follow, all the struggle and frustration and anger really boil down to one thing: If I want to follow Him I have to accept that He is who He is whether I get it or not, He’s going to do what He’s going to do whether I like it or not. I sounds harsh, but notwithstanding His love and patience with my struggle, I have to get in line behind Him or walk way. Knowing that I do still desperately need Him, I know what my choice will be in the end. But it is a long and difficult road to get to the end and I feel somewhat trapped inside an endless maze.

I talk myself in circles, but I hope and believe that one day, like Alice in Wonderland, I’ll open up a before unseen door that will lead me at last to the glorious and freeing end of my struggles. Meanwhile, to find that door, I must keep talking and continue questioning. So, here goes.

This is what I know. I love God. He loves me. The purpose of my life is to know Him and glorify Him. By whatever means necessary He will work towards achieving that goal in my life. That is what I know. Now the circles begin.

I love God - most of the time. More than I love Him now I recognize my need for Him. I dislike that I have this need and very often wish that it was simply a need of my own devising. There are times I would gladly say, “I don’t really need Him. I’m only using Him as an excuse or a crutch.” I would love to say that. The problem is that I will always know, deep down, that I’m wrong. There is an emptiness in me that can only ever be filled by Him. I could pretend but I will always know the truth. I could hide from it for a time, but it would be time wasted, for I would always return to Him.

So. OK. Fine. That’s settled. I do now and will always need Him. I don’t love this, but it cannot be ignored.

Now, as to “He loves me.” This is simple and yet more difficult. There is Scripture that cannot be ignored, places where I am told over and over of His love. There are songs that resonate as truth to my soul that tell me of His love. There is all of my past and His many answers to prayers and expressions of love that serve as a reminder of this truth. There is the unavoidable fact that He sent His son to die for me - the greatest expression of love I could ever imagine. But more than that is the knowledge in the utter depth and dark places of my soul that He loves me. Every new day, every hour, moment and breath speak to me, whisper of His love for me.

Despite all of this (yes, I see my arrogance in even hinting that I could argue with all of this), there is an ever unmoving complication: He let my daughter die. He took her away and left me, like an amputee, limping and hobbling my way through the rest of my life.

When I look to Him now, I see the cause and source of great joy and sweet healing, but I also see the cause of my suffering. How can it be that He is both? How am I supposed to look to Him for healing when, as far as I can see (notwithstanding the sinful world I am part of) much of the responsibility for my life’s greatest pain rests squarely on His shoulders?

If it is love, I do not understand it. But whether I understand it or not, the evidence of His love cannot be ignored. So then, the love and the suffering must be able to be reconciled somehow. This, it seems, brings me to my final knowledge and the only explanation, however unsatisfying I might find it, that makes enough sense to fit. The purpose of my life is to know and glorify Him. I would add, too, that He wants me to know as much as I can the depth of His love for me.

If, as I believe, everything that I am and everything that happens to me is part of God's plan for me to know Him better and to glorify Him, it means that Lydia’s death and my current suffering was meant to teach me to know and love Him better and to give me opportunity to glorify Him. This feels impossible, but I cannot ignore it.

To stare at it and reduce it to its simplest terms, the question becomes this: Which do I want more - to know and glorify Him or to have my baby here and whole with me. I’ve struggled with this from before Lydia’s conception and indeed long before that. Always the same question - is He enough? The difficulty is that for every other time I said He was enough, it was a “victimless crime” in the sense that no one but me had to be sacrificed. If I never get married, You are enough. If I never get pregnant, You are enough. But...if You take away my girl...I don’t know.

I don’t want to accept it. To say He’s enough is to say that it’s OK that she suffered while she was on the earth, that I had to watch as she died in my arms, that I had to bury her sweet body in the ground and live my life without her.

None of that is OK with me.

But then, the love. Stubborn and belligerent as I am, it starts to seep in. He will do anything so that I will know Him better. His love for me is so great that He would let my child die so that I could understand another facet of Him that I have never known before - that He would let His child die so that He could show His love for me. And then, finally, I turn my eyes back to His face, I see tears in His eyes because He knows my grief. He suffered this great grief so that I could know Him...and to know me was enough of a reason for Him to watch His son die.

What I long to say though it feels like it costs me everything - if my child is dead and I must suffer that loss, God, You are enough - He says it about me. His child died and He suffered that loss and I was enough of a reason for Him to do that.

It’s staggering, the knowledge of His love. And deep in my soul I know and I understand it now in a way I never would have unless my own child had died. I feel so much like this should be it - the door out of the maze. But it seems it’s merely the door into another, smaller maze with a door to another smaller maze and on and on until when? Heaven, I guess, when the veil will be lifted from my eyes and I will see in full what I see now only in part.

It makes now so clear to me the longing in the words of the hymn... "Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight.”