Wandering in the Desert...

This past weekend I had the opportunity to get away for a couple of days with my Dad for a weekend of planning and dreaming for our ministries this Fall.  My Uncle's beach house was available, my Dad and I both were able to clear our calendars, so we hopped in the car and headed for a 48 hour retreat of sorts.  My intentions were to think about Youth Ministry and come up with this killer list of things that I hoped I would happen this Fall.  While I was able to spend some time dreaming and planning, I think I spent more time trying to make sense of where I am personally at.

The past few months have felt as though I have been wandering in the desert.  For starters, we have been in a transition year of youth ministry.  With almost 15 seniors graduating last year, many who were leaders, we have struggled to find a rhythm this year.  Life is complicated.  Families are busy.  Youth ministry, and more importantly Jesus, doesn't always wind up at the top of people's priority list.  I have this urgency in my heart for teens to know and understand the transforming love of Jesus, but recognize the battle that takes place every day for their souls.  There have been so many days that I have asked myself, "How long, God, until they get it?  Do they realize total surrender to you will change everything?"  It often feels like I am in the desert wandering around in circles praying for change.

I find myself in that same desert when it comes to enlarging our family.  This Tuesday, Nate and I will have been married for 14 years.  At the start of our marriage, I would have had no idea just how difficult it would be to start a family.  Between our journey of infertility and our journey of adoption, waiting has become our middle name.  When we brought home Biruk, we just figured that in another couple of years, we would start the adoption process over, and since we had gotten through it once, surely the second time around would be even easier.   It will be two years this summer and we have begun to look at programs and agencies to start the process again.  Looking has been a little like wandering in the desert.

We have struggled to find programs open with children under Biruk's age (one thing that is important to us), so I began to pray that God would somewhat drop a child in our lap or make it really clear as to what direction we were to go.  Within a week of praying that pray, we got a call from a friend about a possible adoption of a little girl from the Philippines.  Within less than 24 hours we were to submit paperwork, answer a bunch of questions about our family, and wait to see if we would be the family that would be picked (there were several families submitting their paper work too).  There were so many things that I felt like God was pointing out to us that made it seem like this perfect situation.  It was as though He was orchestrating this crazy awesome story that we would one day be able to tell.  Selfishly, I wanted her in our home, but had been praying that God would place her with the exact family she needed.  In the end, we were not picked.

It's funny...the pain of barrenness never really goes away.  When the disappointment of the possibility of the adoption sunk in, it was as though I reverted back to so many of those years I struggled with infertility and the disappointment there.  I felt like I was wandering in a desert I didn't really want to wander in again.

There are so many things out of our control in this life.  I wish that I could make every teenager fall in love with Jesus in a way where they would surrender everything on the spot.  While sometimes I wish I could just get pregnant, more times I wish that I could just hop on a plane and rescue the orphans all over the world who will not get tucked in tonight.  I wish it was that easy.

Maybe it wasn't meant to be easy.

Maybe it's in the desert that we discover a deeper desire for Jesus.

Sarah Hagerty, author of "Every Bitter Thing is Sweet, " says this, "I don't want to be a hungry soul for just a season.  I want to live hunger.  This is what draws me to Him.  This is what fills every single bitter circumstance with the opportunity to know him more.  This is what brings me to the sweetness of His presence.  And hope happens here at this nexus of bitter and sweet."

Maybe hope is around the corner.







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