Why does following God hurt so bad??? You would think that with all the scary trusting it requires, that at the very least, the actual ________________ (insert whatever you are supposed to do) would work out. To brave the uncharted waters of your calling, and face things you never imagined, to go after the insurmountable......when you trust and follow God, your calling works out. At least, that's the way it's supposed to go, isn't it?
But it doesn't. Sometimes everything falls apart. Irreparably.
We started trying to adopt Micah four years ago. FOUR. We KNOW we are his family. We know we are called to him. We know he is our son. We love him with everything we have, and we have given up so much to bring him home. And yet, here we are in America. His bed is empty, his clothes are folded and untouched. His pictures and books collect dust. And he sits in an orphanage across the world, day after day, year after year, with no language or love, and hope that is running dry. The desperation for him, the pain of hurting for him.....it consumes me.
I have two other children in Ethiopia. Two precious, beautiful children who hold my heart. We have been trying to adopt them since March of 2013. Two years. We haven't written about them for privacy, and because it hurts to talk about them. It hurts to face the fear that maybe we will never get them out. So we don't talk about it. We can't face it. But today the pain of everything is shredding me. It's ripping my heart from my chest, squeezing me so tightly that I can't breathe. I can't move. I'm being strangled and yet sliced open all at once. I'm bleeding out and there is no tourniquet.
Today we got the news that something else that we have invested our time, our hearts, and our life into is not going to work out. Today, after beating out odds that you can't even imagine, we were given news that destroyed us. Today, my heart was ripped from my chest and trampled on, and I am expected to sew myself up and keep going like it never happened. And I am strong. I am a fighter. I am a rock for my family to lean on. And usually, I can hold myself together.
But today I was hysterical.
I can't even remember the last time I cried like this. Abe has never seen me even see me be half this much a wreck. The pain of everything we have been through the past six years just cumulated and the loss we experienced today sent me to a place of grief like none other. My heart literally broke.
Does God have a plan that I can't see? Of course He does. Does He know better than me? Yes. Can He work this for good and make sense and good of it? Undoubtably. He is GOD. But that does not mean that we are just happily accepting whatever comes our way. I believe in righteous anger. I believe in hating how sin hurts people. And I have children trapped and hurting, and I can't get to them. I have children at home, wholly trusting me and Abe to keep them safe, and we can't. They are caught in the crossfire. Innocent babies, who experience the pain of following God through a broken world right along with us. We do not walk through this life unscathed. Instead, we are left blindly reeling from the searing pain of going where we were told to go, and then having the life crushed out of us.
God, find us faithful.
