Created for Care Part 1 - Repentance and Reliance

    A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of going to an adoption conference called Created for Care.  I traveled and roomed with some friends from Huntsville, AL.  I couldn't decide what I was more excited about:  the trip with good friends or the conference.  I had no clue what all God had in store for me during the sweet weekend with a lodge full of adoptive mamas.

    You see, adoption is a journey, for our family, that I don't always understand.  As I have shared in other post, adoption is hard.  The wait is hard.  The longing is hard.  The not knowing is hard. Adoption is also amazing, and the ways in which God is showing Himself to me and my family are, well, hard to even describe.  The love I can have for a child I have yet to meet is amazing.  The way my heart has been changed and drawn to love a God, one that I have known for years, more and more is amazing.  The way my sweet little family of four gathers together to ask God to care for soon-to-be (hopefully) family members and to bring them home quickly is amazing.  The questions that adoption brings for my five and three year old to ask is amazing. The way the word adoption opens the door to share the gospel with people we barely know is amazing.

    God has moved and worked and moved and worked in my heart throughout our adoption story and I am sure there is moving and working yet to come.  God used this conference to gently, but undeniably, reveal sin in my heart and renew a reliance on Him.  I thought I would walk away with great knowledge nuggets about adoption and a feeling of encouragement.  While those two things are true, they take a back burner to the truth shown to me.

I could feel God working from the minute I entered the van with the three godly women with whom God orchestrated for me to travel.  I could feel His gentle, unmistakable chiseling.  One of my friends said, "When God calls you to do something, you don't make a pros and cons list.  That is just not how obedience works.  We are called to a obey."  Such wisdom.  Such truth.  I could feel the walls beginning to break.

Once we arrived, it seemed the theme of every session, no matter the actual topic, was drawing me to repent.  It started in the first breakout session, "Waiting", when a woman shared her story and then shared that she felt God asking her, "What if the things you view as failures are actually successes?  Will you still follow me?  Will you still follow when you don't understand?"  Wham! Like that, this question entered my heart with such force I couldn't breath.  Will I?  Am I?  While I wait, on the days I feel discouraged, am I trusting and following God?  There were now gaping holes in my walls.

Then, in our main session, the speaker spoke from Exodus about God using Moses to tell Pharaoh to let His people go. At one point, during the plague of frogs, Pharaoh agrees to let the people go because he wants the frogs gone.  Moses asks when he would like the frogs to go, and Pharaoh says tomorrow.  Tomorrow! Really, Pharaoh, tomorrow, not now this very minute?  The speaker points out that frogs are like our sin, and God is saying, "I have freedom for you; just let go of your frog." And we say, "Hold on. Tomorrow."  That got me thinking, "What is my frog? What am I holding on to?"  And down the walls came.

  The chisel had broken through and my heart was laying outside of me, raw and vulnerable.  I could see all the dark spots clearly now.  I could see the parts of my heart that were no longer fleshy and full but hardened and dark.  I could see a belief that had crept in and was shriveling my heart bit by bit.  If it continued, my heart would no longer beat and pump life into me, and those around but would turn completely hard and crumble, giving in to the lies that the enemy had placed there.

God began, in a way that only He can, to show me that I was not trusting in Him.  I had given in to the lie that God is not good and that He is not calling us to what is best for us.  I had been holding onto control.  I had become selfish in my desire to adopt, and I had made His calling about me.  Having children, whether biologically or through adoption, is not about me.  This life, my life, is about obedience to God.  He has called us to adopt just as he called us to biologically have children.  This is His plan for our life, and He is in control.

My job, my family's job, is to be obedient, say yes, and be in a position to be used.  In God's timing, He will call on us to be a family for a child. And, when that time comes, we will be overjoyed.  For now, we wait with expectancy, and we rest in the knowledge that we serve a mighty God and that this is His plan, His life.