what do answers look like?

we Christians do a lot of praying. we pray for people who are sick, or hurting, or suffering. we pray for forgiveness for the things we've done wrong and the things we've failed to do right. we pray for wisdom and the strength to use it. we pray for peace. we pray that we will love well and accept love well. we pray that we will be more like Jesus and practice kindness and gentleness and patience and self control. we pray for many, many more things that are much more mundane like parking spots. and we also pray for what we want (in case God doesn't know).   the last prayer, we are really good at.

in the middle of december, we started praying hard about rose's adoption. and we told all our "prayers" to be praying about rose's adoption- because miracle of all miracles- we had actually gotten a court date for december 17th. our prayer had been that things would go smoothly, that all the moving pieces that need to come together would come together, that people would show up when and where they were supposed to show up. we prayed for the best for rose. we prayed for God's will to be done, and while we felt very confident that His will would be the same as our will, we prayed knowing that it might not be, and saying we trust Him.

rose's story is complicated and messy and has had many chapters. there have been twists in the plot and turns that we didn't expect. but her story, like all of our stories, is amazingly special as it is and because of the complicated. her story reminds me that God is at work behind the scenes - that she is firstly, His child, and i get to be a part of the story.  one day she was a child abandoned on the street, then she was one of many children in a babies home, then she was our foster child, then our foster child with a found birth mother, then a found birth father, and now she is the child of two biological parents whose language she no longer speaks, and the child of two legal guardians who she calls mom and dad, with her american accent. 

that week in the middle of december we prayed for lots of things to happen and none of them happened. the social worker refused to write his report, the fingerprinting place had been relocated and the affidavits to be signed by rose's biological parents, weren't signed. it wasn't just logistics. they weren't signed because we found out, after talking to them with translators and the lawyer, that they are not ready. they fear we may leave the country with her and never return. they fear judgement from their tribe. the answer to all that praying was totally not what we'd hoped for or expected. the answer was "no" to smoothly, "no" to the moving pieces coming together, and "no" to people doing what they were going to do. we had to cancel the court date.

i suppose it could be tempting to look at it and say that God did not answer our prayers.

but He did.

after many, many years of inquiring and listening and requesting and waiting on God, we have learned to trust Him. to trust that His way and in His time, is what's best for rose, and what's best for everyone. and there are a lot of everyones in rose's story. 

our bible study is studying joshua right now. it's another book about the israelites messing up and God forgiving them, over and over again (which i love because this is me too). it's also about a lot of violence and wars as they conquer other tribes to move into their promised land. one of my favorite things is that many times before battle God says to joshua, "i have given them over to you. do not be afraid." i love that it's the past tense. the fighting hasn't happened yet and God is using the past tense to describe their victory. that was the feeling i'd had for those weeks in december about this adoption, that God was saying- it's already done.

so once we had the court date, i had started to imagine life with this chunk over. with a big unknown settled. i imagined having the freedom to travel with rose, to go back to the states in the summer and visit family and friends. i imagined the safety of knowing that if there was political unrest during the elections in february and we had to leave, that we'd be fine leaving the 6 of us. i started imagining applying for her US passport and adding 'reid' to the end of her name. i imagined i'd have some more control over my life.

but the answer was 'no'. or at least 'not now'. the answer was wait on me, live the secure adventure of trusting me always. be okay with living in that in between space. know that I have all of you in my everlasting arms.  God is still using the past tense to tell me that her story is already written perfectly, but what exactly that will look like, and when and how things will happen, is a big question mark.

this is why God says the second part to joshua, do not be afraid. He knows how hard it is for us to trust and live in spaces we didn't choose, that waiting and growing and learning are painful and scary. He knows.

it's so easy to be afraid.
it's so hard to not let the 'what if's' run circles in my mind.
it's so hard to be still. to trust. to wait with out fear. 

this is holding the tension of the opposites. i love my 4th child deeply. i don't know if we will ever have the same last name. it's welcoming the blessing of raising her in her birth country. it's living with ambiguity, and embracing the truth of not knowing the future. and i can do this because i have seen God hide goodness in places that i didn't want to go. because He has let me see incredible beauty in painful things. because growth happens in the darkness. we are enlarged in the waiting. and Grace abounds in the hardest seasons. His way is life to the fullest- and that's how i want to live mine.

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart,
and try to love the questions themselves
as if they were locked rooms
or books written in a very foreign language.

Do not search for the answers, which could not be given to you now,
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday far in the future,
you will gradually,
without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke