Thoughts from Mother's Day

It took me a while to write about this topic, so I'm sorry that it's a few weeks late. Mother's day was a little tough. Not for the reasons you might suspect, but being so far away from my wonderful mom and my sister who is having a baby soon. I realized that living here in China I may never get to feel my sister's swollen belly. I'm also not going to get to help her set up, or go shopping with her. I can send things I buy online to her, sure, but that isn't everything I want to give her! I want to help with the baby shower and sew a baby blanket for her. I also want to hang out and feel the baby kick. These things make me miss home. I wish I could have gone camping with them for my mom's birthday a few weeks ago. I wish I could sit on the porch swing and talk with her, telling her about thoughts and dreams we have. I wish I could tell her, face-to-face, all about the adoption plans and obstacles. I wish I could brainstorm with her, weigh pros and cons.

These things and the thoughts about my future family were enough to avoid going to church. Now I realize that this may offend some, but I honestly could not make myself go to church on Mother's day. I would leave more depressed than encouraged and I knew exactly how that church service would go anyway. Now I'm not saying that celebrating Mother's Day is a bad idea, but really just hard for me at this point in my life. Sometimes a little extra private Bible study is better than a church service; not always mind you, but for some situations I feel church is more of a hindrance to my spiritual walk than a help. I knew this church service would involve lady's who are mothers being asked to stand and be recognized. This would count mother's whose babies are grown, new mothers, mothers who are in the middle of child-rearing and altogether ladies who have children. This was highly uncomfortable for me because of the fact that I so long to be a momma. My little sister having a baby before I have any children is a little, well, depressing. I also feel that most churches fail to recognize the mommas who have lost babies or suffer infertility. I have wanted to have a baby since I've been engaged. I wanted to start a family as soon as we were married. God and David had other plans. This has been a difficult and fantastic change. I chafed for years that I was not allowed to follow my plans. For periods of time I felt like a baby was the key to my happiness. I felt like the only way I could really begin to enjoy my life was having a baby and starting into motherhood. I wanted to design my baby's room and see my husband hold it and love it. I thought this would complete my world and my marriage.

It's funny how desires, even entirely pure ones, can be in exact opposition to what God plans for our lives. He had my husband remain strong in insistence that we should wait, that we were not yet ready. Through my tears and pleads and depressions, David was able to comfort me and give me hope, but not give in to my wants. So I waited, mostly unhappily. Eventually, through a Bible study started this school year, I was able to see that God sometimes holds off our wants for something better. I may not be infertile, but I have definitely waited, painfully for children. I know that God has done everything according to his purpose, and I have seen that plainly in my life. It is crazy how God turned my heart from the desire to have a baby, to have a child. From having a child to having children. God was not only working on my heart during this time, but also David's heart. He previously had been opposed to the idea of adoption or having a child at the time at all. He grew more and more open as time passed, and he was the one who heard about a sibling group and felt so completely at peace. 

When we talked about Bulgaria, the biggest reason we came to the decision was we felt peace. When we thought and prayed about other countries there was a tension, an indecision. There were just so many options! So many countries with babies that needed a family! How could we ever choose?! But when we found Bulgaria and the need for families to adopt sibling groups, we just knew that this is what we should do. This is where we should go to start our family. We know that sometimes God point us into a direction only to turn us when we think we're just about to our destination. We know that he may change us into something new and unexpected. We're just excited to begin our part of serving the orphans we were called to care for.