He is Fighting for Us...

This past Friday, Nate and I went for what will hopefully be our last time for fingerprinting in this adoption process.  We had to get up early, travel all the way down to the city of Baltimore, and stand in big long line.  We were almost to the front of the line, when the lady in front of us was "ordered" to take off her band aid.  She had a cut on her finger and apparently cuts are off limits when it comes to fingerprinting.  The woman behind the counter looked at the cut and said, "Well...you are just going to have to come back when it heals.  Next..."  The woman looked dumbfounded and I quickly turned to Nate exclaiming, "Check your fingers, check your fingers...if we have to go home because either of us have a paper cut, I swear..."  Thankfully, neither of us did and we checked finger printing off of our list of adoption "things to do" AGAIN.

We are getting antsy.  September 11 will be 18 months on the wait list and let me say, we are antsy.  Within the past two weeks, we were offered a couple of chances to pursue local adoptions, one being a newborn baby.  After much prayer, we both felt like we had to stay the journey God is calling us to, one that will eventually lead us to pick up our kids in Ethiopia.  I know that some of you are probably reading this thinking that we are idiots for not going after those adoptions.  There are probably others thinking, maybe God is trying to redirect us.  Trust me, we have thought those very same things at one point or another, but when we pray about it, we continue to believe God is calling us to pursue Ethiopia with all of our hearts.  And so, we wait.

Several times in my quiet time with God in the past two weeks, he has reminded me that waiting is sometimes required in our journey so that God can do what he needs to do.  I was reading a book called "Sacred Rhythms," by Ruth Haley Barton who says this:

"Another reason we are so tired is that we are always working hard to figure things out rather than learning how to cease striving, how to be with what is true in God's presence and let God be God in the most intimate places in our life-which in the end is the only thing that will change anything.  We're busy trying to make stuff happen rather than waiting on God to make stuff happen."  She then goes on to talk about Moses leading the Israelites to the promised land, when they are faced with the red sea in front of them and the Egyptians behind them.  They are complaining about their future when Moses says this, "Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again.  The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still. (Exodus 14:13-14).  She concludes by saying, "For the most part, I'm not sure we human beings are capable of being still and letting God fight for us without a discipline to help us do it."  The discipline she is talking about is solitude.

 

I have never been great at being still.  I am one who wants to see things happen.  I am one who gets antsy waiting for just about anything.  These days, God is asking me to "dig deep" and be still.  He is asking Nate and I to trust him with the plan.  He is challenging us to stop trying to make things happen and let him fight for the plan he has had from the beginning.

I have been reading the Psalms lately, and stumbled across Psalm 8 when David talks about our God who made the sun, the moon and all the stars in the sky.  He reminds us in that passage that the same Creator God is "mindful" of man.  I looked that word up in the thesaurus and it said this, "alert...conscience...knowledgeable...watchful...thoughtful...
plugged in...in the know."  Not only is God fighting for us as we wait, but he is mindful.  Somehow in the silence God is reminding me these days, he has not forgotten us.  So, I will wait, be still, and expect some amazing things are coming our way.