Waiting: Month One

Since we were only technically on the referral list for 3 days, I don’t feel like the waiting really began until we had a referral picture, one month ago today. 

A couple years ago I heard someone from our agency give advice about “protecting yourself” from getting too attached to the referral picture kid. Her advice was good I guess but I remember sitting there thinking “There’s no way” and “How do you do that?” It seemed at the time completely unrealistic.

But now that we are here, I get it. I think that I get it in part because of our experience with Ethiopia. Being denied was hard and hurtful and my fleshly reaction was/is to put up walls to protect myself from being hurt again. I went through the motions of requesting an updated home study, filling out the DRC program application and changing our CIS approval, etc.  all the while not truly letting myself fall in love with the children of the Congo.

The morning we received our referral I had spent the previous 12 hours alternating vomiting every 30 minutes with Moses. I begged William to stay home from work but he couldn’t so Moses and I lay on the couch while Meadow destroyed the living room. I was dazing in and out of sleep when William called with “good news.” He said “There’s a little boy in the Congo named…” at which point I interrupted him with “SHUT. UP.” He continued with the very little info the Congo Lady gave him. Within 30 minutes we had signed a non-disclosure form and gotten back a picture. (Via email)

And there he was. Two big brown eyes staring back at me from my computer screen.

I’ve been asked if I “knew.” If I immediately fell in love with the kid in the picture. If I knew he was mine.

I didn’t. And I don’t.

I thought on that day a month ago it was because I was sleep deprived and sick. But the fact that I still don’t “know” tells me (among other things) that I’ve still got my walls up. I’m still trying to protect myself. (Which is ridiculous for a number of reasons, including that I’m not even capable of that.)

I know that I’m still subconsciously trying not to fall in love with the kid in the picture because of the “what if’s” and my inability to control them from the other side of the planet. (Or at all, from anywhere.)

What if someone claims him?
What if the DRC denies our case?
What if the Tshisekedi supporters take to the streets and the embassy shuts down?
What if he gets malaria and dies?

I have spent the last month trying to control my life and ignore my fears. I’ve kept myself busy by making ornaments and managing our Etsy shop. I haven’t taken the truth about how I feel to God. The truth that I am scared to fall in love with the little boy in the picture because I don’t want to be hurt again. I don’t want to live through another “what if” coming true.

So am I protecting myself? Yes. But not in a healthy way. And I’m not honestly even sure that it’s good advice. Or possible.

The little boy in that picture deserves to be loved so much that it hurts. And, just like a women with an ultrasound picture hanging on her fridge, while a “what if” might come true and I may never hold him in my arms, God put him in my life right now to be mine in this way.

I can intercede on his behalf in a way that no one was able to do before. And that kind of protection, from the Ultimate Protector, is infinitely better than my selfish ambition of keeping myself from being hurt and controlling what happens to him in my own strength. Only God can protect the little boy on our fridge, only God can give me the strength to make it through the “what if’s” that come true and only He could have adopted someone as selfish as me into his family.

I’m SO thankful for the picture of adoption the gospel provides for us, for His power over the tragedies that make adoption necessary and the grace and protection He freely gives to us as his children.

As I fall in love with those big brown eyes (and get real with God), I’m asking that you keep the little boy on our fridge in your prayers. He needs protection that only his heavenly Father can provide.