Sight for the Blind

Last week, I went to the eye doctor, and I am finally going to give in and get some glasses (but ONLY for reading and working on the computer :-).  I think it is very fitting that right now will be the first time in my life that I will start wearing glasses, because I feel like God has given me new sight over these past few weeks.  These weeks since Sergey left and we first learned how much he was struggling with his decision to join our family  have been some of the hardest of my life.  I was forced to come to grips with the fact that we might never see him again, and that felt almost too hard to accept.  It felt like walking into a dark room - I couldn't see what was ahead, I was afraid of what might be inside, and everything in me screamed to turn around and run away. Thankfully God had placed such a deep love for this boy in our hearts that running away was not an option, so we walked into the room.  It was a quiet place, and eventually even in the darkness I started to feel a peace and thought that I might really be okay.  And then we walked even deeper into the dark as I found out that I needed to have a biopsy done on a suspicious place found in a breast ultrasound.  At that point, any hint of light that I thought I saw ahead of me seemed to vanish.

Whenever I am driving down the road and see a funeral procession, it always strikes me as so odd that all of the rest of us are driving around, living our lives, going to work, attending school, talking to our kids, while this person who I don't even know is burying a loved one.  It always feels to me that everything should just stop.  When a tragedy has occurred, it feels like time should come to a halt, the sun should stop shining, and we should all sit and mourn this loss.  And when I think about the family members who are suffering that loss, I think of how alone they must feel.  For a mother, how she knows that NO OTHER MOTHER has just lost that child.  For a husband, that NO OTHER HUSBAND has just lost that wife.  It has seemed so unfair to me, that these people suffer while all of the rest of us are given the gift of an ordinary trip to the grocery store.  And then on a deeper level, there was always the fear lurking, "What about when that is me?  What if I lose my husband, or one of my children?  How will I survive?  I will be the only one suffering that loss, and I don't think I will be able to handle it."

And so when Clint is 20 minutes late coming home and doesn't answer his cell phone, the strong grip of fear grabs ahold of me. When I go outside and call and call for one of the kids and can't find them, panic rises up inside of me.  I think, "This is a road I can NOT walk down. I will NOT survive if this turns out badly."  Living this way robs so much joy from my life - clutching white-knuckled to the blessings that God has given me keeps me from being able to truly cherish and enjoy them.  I believe that if He were to take away any of those blessings, I would not be able to go on living.  I remember when Olivia was first born, I was lying in the hospital bed telling Clint over and over, "If anything happens to her, I will die.  Really. I will die. I will NOT go on living.  Really."  He just said "Okay, honey" and patted me on the head ;-), but I truly believed it.  I loved her so much, I could not possibly go on living without her.

Fast forward ahead to these past two weeks in our lives.  Fast forward to me being the one standing in the dark room, in the very, very tight grip of fear.  I am embarrassed, especially as a wife of a pastor and someone who has known Jesus her whole life, to admit just how strong that grip really was.  It was brutal.  I imagined all kinds of scenarios, including one where Sergey told us that he definitely wanted us to come adopt him, but then I would get a call telling me that I had cancer, and then the adoption would be off, since you have to be in good health to adopt.  That was just one scenario - I had many others as well.  I so wish I could say that I just sat back and trusted God, and knew that, whatever happened in either situation, I would trust him and be at peace.  But I didn't.

However, God used these days to change me, and that is why I am writing this post.  Over the course of those two weeks, I spent most of my time reading, writing, and praying.  I read the Bible, I read books, I read blogs.  I had a few conversations with my closest friends, but mostly I just spent time by myself looking to God for answers.  And honestly it wasn't just about these situations.  I knew that even if they both turned out well (which they have!!!!!! PRAISE GOD!!!!!), they wouldn't always turn out well.  Super hard things are going to happen in my life, and one day I will die.  Those are just true statements, no matter how hard I try to avoid their reality and mask the fear with all kinds of distractions.  Nothing had really changed in my life, other than the fact that I had just been brought more closely face-to-face with the reality that is always lurking behind every moment of my life, the reality of pain, suffering, and death.  I have lived a blessedly pain-free life.  It has not been perfect, but it has been free of tragedy and deep loss, and fairly free of suffering.  I have been able quite easily to push back the threat of darkness and death, but here I was standing in the room with it and wondering what was going to happen next.

And what happened, or at least what I think happened, is that God began to change me.  I am still afraid of dying, I am still afraid of cancer, I am still afraid of losing a child.  I can't imagine that any sane person would not be afraid of these things.  However, I do think that God has begun, even if imperceptibly, to loosen the grip that fear has on my heart.  How did He do this?  One way, I think, is simply by his Holy Spirit, in a way that I cannot understand or explain.  I cried out so many times "Jesus please help me," and I think that simply He did.  He eased my pain and fear, and I feel different than I did a month ago.

One way that I am certain he answered my prayers for help was by opening my eyes (hence the title of this blog).  In John 9, we read a story of a man who was born blind.  The disciples ask Jesus who sinned, the man or his parents, that he was born blind.  Jesus responds with these words: "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life."  I have been thinking about this in terms of what has been happening to me.  I am reading an AMAZING book by Paul Miller called "A Loving Life," that examines the book of Ruth.  In it, he talks about "the low place."  He is talking about a place of humility, a place that Ruth goes willingly when she gives up her entire life to love and follow her mother-in-law Naomi.  Neither of the hard things I was facing were voluntary, but I feel like they had brought me to a place of humility.  I had none of the confidence, none of the ability, none of the security that I had previously felt.  Here were two difficult situations, and I had absolutely NO control over either of them.  I had not chosen the humble place, but I had been placed there regardless.  Miller says this about "the low place":

"You discover people in the low place. It is like entering a darkened room full of friends.  At first, you think you are alone, you can't make out anyone, but then as your eyes adjust to the light, you begin to see friends everywhere, maybe people that you didn't notice when you were up higher."  He also adds that "The great joy of the low place is that it is where God dwells (Isa 57:15)."  As I entered that dark room, and felt alone, I eventually discovered that I was NOT alone.  Over the weeks, as my eyes adjusted, I was able to see more and more clearly the other people who were there.  I saw so very clearly how many people were there for me, who were praying for me, loving me, bringing me meals, calling me, texting me, emailing me, hugging me and loving me.  Of course, I knew those people were there before, but somehow they looked very different as they emerged from the dark place and I saw them in a whole new light.  Before, they were just the fun and awesome people that God put in my life as a gift to enjoy.  Now, however, they were beautiful and kind people who God put in my life to help save me.  As I watched them emerge from the shadows, they just looked different.  More real, somehow more there.  And ultimately, their acts of love and kindness pointed to the most real, the most there one, who had given them to me, who had put them in my life.  And I just knew that He was there in a new way that  I don't think I ever had before.  And so my prayer now, as God continues to bring more and more sight to my blind eyes, is that "his work would be displayed" in me.

This experience was just a quick glimpse into the dark room, a preview of much harder things that I will most likely face later in my life (and that many of you have already faced).  We talked to Sergey this week and he said that he does want to come, and less than an hour later the doctor's office called to say that the biopsy was cancer-free.  The kindness of God in putting those two events so close together was almost more than I could bear.  It felt like a personal, intimate, tender word of love from my Abba Father who knows me and loves me.  I don't want to go back in that dark room, and I am SOOOOO loving being back out in the sunlight - it feels so very good :-).  However, whenever God in his infinite wisdom and love sees fit to call me back into the room, I think my eyes will adjust a bit more quickly. I think I will step into the room with just a bit more confidence, knowing that my friends are in there waiting for me, and that, most importantly, the God who made me, knows me, and sent his Son to die for me, is waiting for me inside with arms open wide.  And hopefully that knowledge will give me a new freedom (I think it already has) as I live out the rest of my days on this earth.

Until I get those glasses, I think I will need to go "rest my eyes."  :-). Good night to you :-).

P.S.  For those of you wondering exactly where we stand in the adoption process at this point, here it is: once we heard from Sergey that he wanted to come, we sent in our request for our first court appointment. We asked for March 18, but we won't know until we hear back from the Ukrainian government exactly what that date will be.  Once we get that date, we will buy tickets for our first trip, which both Clint and I will take, and that should last about 10 days.  When we return from that trip, we will wait for our next court date, which will likely be a few weeks after that.  Clint and I will return for that court date, and that trip will probably last around 10 days as well, but might be a bit shorter.  We will both come home from that, and then about 10 days later I will return with my wonderful Aunt Jeannie to pick Sergey up from the orphanage and do the rest of the paperwork necessary: visa, passport, medical records, etc. The length of that trip will just depend on the speed of appointments and paperwork.  And THEN, FINALLY, we will bring our boy HOME :-).

Picture taken soon after we were given so much good news :-).  So many crazy things had to happen to make this picture possible.  God is so very good to me :-).  I think you can almost see the look of disbelief still in my eyes.

The Real Truth

Last night we were wildly blessed to be a part of a beautiful community event.  The MOMS Club of Mechanicsville hosted a family dance (The Bop to Adopt Family Dance and Silent Auction) to help us raise funds for our adoption.  There were somewhere around 300 people in attendance, and over $8000 was raised. It was truly the perfect night, and was the result of MUCH hard work by a handful of very special friends.  It was a night where we felt loved and where we saw the absolute loveliness of our community. We will never, EVER, EVER forget it.

During one of the many very special conversations that I was able to have over the course of the evening, something struck me and has prompted me to write this (very, very long - sorry!) post.  I was speaking to a dear friend about a mutual friend who has recently experienced a great tragedy.  As we spoke, something she said made me realize that I have not been truly faithful or honest in the picture I have been painting of my life.  Obviously my close friends are aware of our reality, but I have been told that there are many people following along with our story who may not even know us, or not know us very well, and I think that they are probably not getting a true picture of what this journey is like, at least right now.

For the sake of Sergey's privacy, I will not go into the details of his struggles or even our interactions with him since he went back after Christmas.  I will just reiterate that he is struggling with what is an impossible decision, as a 15 year old boy, to leave behind all he has ever known, to come to a completely new world, totally unaware of what his future will look like.  We would ask for you to continue to pray for him and would also like to thank you for your faithfulness in doing so!! Our "Pray for Sergey" SignUp Genius continues to have new names added, and we are so grateful.

What I'd like to share now is a little bit more of my story, of how this last month has looked and felt for me.  My conviction as I chatted with my friend last night was that I have presented a fairly rosy public picture of how I/we have been doing.  If you have only been following us here or on Facebook, then you have seen lots of great pictures, countless pairs of shoes collected, thousands of dollars raised on Amazon, hundreds of folks coming together to have fun and support our cause.  All of that has been true and it has been miraculous.  God has used so many things we would have never even dreamed of to raise what once looked like an unattainable amount of money.  He has drawn in so many folks to support us, to pray for Sergey, and to love our family.  I could never have believed all of this could happen to us, and that's why I'm always so excited to announce these things to everyone in the world on Facebook :-).

However, there has been another side of this ride that only those closest to us have really seen.  I think I wanted to not make people uncomfortable, to not scare them away from hosting or adopting, to not be Debbie Downer and have folks avoid me when I might run into them in public.  And also, to be honest, it just hurt too much to even sit down and write it all out.  What I realized last night was that I am harming people by only telling them one side of the story. We all have pain, we all have aches, disappointments, unmet longings, deep scars.  On the one hand, we do love to rejoice with each other - to click "like" on an airport picture of a family reunited.  We love when things turn out well, we love a happy ending. But on the other hand, we are all very aware of the stories in our own lives and those around us that don't end up tied with a pretty bow.  We know that things don't always turn out well, more often than any of us really cares to admit.  It's easier, most of the time, to just survive, to push down that reality and just live on the level where things are happy, a place my dear friend Hunter Thompson has aptly named "Shallowland."  There are always lots of fun things to do in Shallowland, and if we try hard enough, we can succeed at living a good portion of our lives there.

Before this past month, I lived a lot more of my life in Shallowland than I care to admit.  I shied away from anything too deep or painful, because it just hurt too much.  I didn't know what to do with people who were in pain - what do I say to them? what can I do for them? how can i do something to make their pain go away?

What I have come to begin to learn over these past few weeks is that there is beauty, peace, and even joy in the deeper worlds, the places where pain takes us.  Part of the beauty of these places exists in the fact that we don't have to be alone in our pain.  There are other people out there struggling, all around us.  If we are willing to admit that we aren't "just fine," we can come along side of each other and love each other in a way that will never, ever exist in Shallowland.  I am wildly blessed to have been given the gift of many dear, kind, generous friends who have loved me and my family so well over this past month.  They have talked to me on the phone as I sobbed and sobbed and could not even speak.  They have sent gifts, emails, texts, cards.  They have called, visited, hugged and prayed.  They have paid for my dinner from across the restaurant as an unexpected and beautiful gesture.  They have followed me into the girls bathroom when I have run out of church unable to control my emotions.  They have not shied away from us in our pain, and have continued to show up.  Being able to cry, to mourn, to feel exactly what I am feeling, has been a gift that my friends have given me.  (And I want to make sure that you realize that my husband is included in this group of "friends," since he is my best friend :-), although he could not follow me into the bathroom, not only because he is a boy but because he is usually up front at the time ;-).  He, more than anyone, has had to live alongside what this pain has done to me, and he has done it with kindness, patience, and tender love. I am grateful for the way he has never demanded me to be someone that I am not - especially as he is not super "comfortable" with emotion ;-).  I love you, honey :-) - I had thought one day that I would "grow up" and not have such strong emotions, but it looks like maybe you are stuck with me like this :-).

So the reason I want to be more honest here is to tell you, whoever you are out there, that I am so sorry for whatever pain you are feeling now, or have felt, or will feel.  I may not know your exact pain or have been in your exact position, and I know that far too many of you have experienced enormous loss that I have not even touched yet in my life.  However, if you are someone that I am blessed enough to call friend, know that I am here, and would love to sit with you, cry with you, pray with you, or share an adult beverage (or two ;-) ) with you.  If I don't know you, or don't know you well enough for you to feel comfortable doing these things with me, please find a friend who will.  Find someone who will listen to you, not judge you, allow you to feel what you are feeling and not rush you into feeling better.  This has been one of the sweetest gifts my friends have given me - allowing me to be sad.  I have recently read (twice in the past three weeks) a phenomenal book on suffering, written by Tullian Tchividjian, called "Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free," in which he says this: "When the bottom falls out of our lives, we don't necessarily find it comforting when people try to cheer us up. No matter how well intended, such overtures create pressure that adds to our distress.  Not only are we suffering, but now we feel bad about how we make those around us feel, or at least, about the disconnect between where they would like us to be and where we actually are."  If there is someone in your life who is struggling (and I am sure there is), allow them to be sad, and don't hurry them to a happier place.  And if you are the one who is struggling, try to surround yourself with friends who give you that freedom (often I think these friends are the fellow strugglers - I've noticed that folks who "have it all together" have much less patience for those of us falling apart.)

We don't know yet where the end of this road will be.  We are praying like crazy (as are many, many of you :-), that God will work a miracle - that Sergey will have the courage to leave everything he's ever known to come be a part of our family (and this community). However, in the meantime, I will continue to have days where my emotions are so overwhelming that I can't leave my house.  I'll continue to have Sundays where it is all I can do to remain standing during the worship time, when I feel like the pain will overcome me and I'll collapse to the ground.  I'll continue to have times where I feel like I literally cannot breathe and I pray I'll wake up and find out it's all a bad dream.  And I know that, until he is here for good, I will feel like a part of my heart is missing, a big chunk of my insides is just not there.  And if he ends up deciding that he can't come, that it's just too hard, I know that I will face even darker days, days that right now I can't even imagine surviving.

But here is what I also know, as Tchividjian says: "We may not ever fully understand why God allows the suffering that devastates our lives.  We may not ever find the right answers to how we'll dig ourselves out. There may not be any silver lining, especially not in the ways we would like.  But we don't need answers as much as we need God's presence in and through the suffering itself.  For the life of the believer, one thing is beautifully and abundantly true: God's chief concern in your suffering is to be with you and be Himself for you ... God wants to free us from ourselves, and there's nothing like suffering to show us that we need something bigger than our abilities and our strength and our explanations.  There's nothing like suffering to remind us how not in control we actually are, how little power we ultimately have, and how much we ultimately need God. In other words, suffering reveals to us the things that ultimately matter, which also happen to be the warp and woof of Christianity: who we are and who God is ... If the foundation of our identity is anything less than God, if the thing that makes us who we are is a position in life, a certain relationship, a prestigious name, money, you name it - then we will experience pain whenever and wherever that foundation is assaulted, as it inevitably will be.  Our suffering will serve as an indicator of how little we actually believe this good news (of Jesus), or at least an indicator of what we are building our life on and where we are looking for meaning.  And when we lose something we believed was crucial to our existence and value, maybe even something that we felt we deserved, when one of the load-bearing beams in the house that glory built collapses, we will become embittered or despondent.  The truth is, suffering does not rob us of joy; idolatry does.  But if our identity is anchored in Christ, so that we are able to say, "Everything I need I already possess in him," then suffering will drive us deeper into our source of joy ... Indeed, the gospel alone provides us with the foundation to maintain radical joy in remarkable loss."

It is this joy and beauty that I have begun to catch a glimpse of during these past few weeks, and it has been an unexpected gift.  And that is truth that I am happy to now be able to share :-).  Jesus is who He says He is, and He does not leave us alone. One last quote from Tchividjian: "There is no guarantee that we will experience relief from pain.  I wish I could say there was.  This life may feel like one long, painful death.  All you can do is hang on, and sometimes you can't even do that.  Fortunately, the good news of the gospel is not an admonition to hang on to God with all your strength and willpower and you'll be okay.  The good news of the gospel is not some gnostic encouragement to view your suffering in the right way, or understand the theology of the cross more deeply.  No, the good news of the gospel is that God is hanging on to you. He's not waiting for you to save yourself or mature into someone who no longer needs Him. He will not let you go, come what may.  Jesus will never, ever leave you or forsake you.  Nothing you can do or not do can separate you from the love of Christ."

And I pray that we will all be able to be honest and share in each other's hardships, share how God is changing us, meeting us, loving us, holding on to us.  I'd love to hear your story, if you're willing to share it with me.  Your story is a gift - please give it to someone soon.  I have faith that you (and your friend!) will be glad you did.