again

I haven't meant to not blog at all.

I think I was waiting for things to settle down.

Whatever that means.

I think I was waiting until I had processed everything.

I think I like to make sure that what I write is totally true and not just a temporary feeling or response, so I just wait to see if what I am feeling is the "real thing" before I let anyone else in on it.

you know what I mean?

but feelings and responses change around here constantly, so there wouldn't be a blog spot for months if I waited to feel the same thing for more than two days in a row.

Smile.

So, the skinny.

Our summer has been full of:
--transition
--adjustments
--changes
--learning
--absolute failure
--grace
--disappointments
--realizations
--cries for help
--laughter
--goodbyes
--more time at home than ever before
--purging
--re-organizing
--forgiveness
--repentance

Deep, deep waters.

I don't trust myself to blog well, to describe well all that adoption is or was or will be. So sometimes it is easier to be quiet. To mull things over a bit.

I think some people expect that once you are home, once you have completed your adoption, that "they all lived happily ever after." And some people just can't handle the truth that adoption is hard. So sometimes it is easier not to talk about it at all.

There have been a few faithful friends who have listened and not judged, accepted and encouraged, allowed the messy to be there for a while and not have things all pretty and packaged in a bow.

If nothing else, this adoption, this bringing two beautiful children into our family, has been truly humbling. I am so not worthy of them. I am so not who they need. I am so not good at this.

I am a failure. Over and over again.

If I have ever understood poverty of spirit, it is now. If I have ever understood the verses, "what a wretched woman I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!" Romans 7:24-25 it is now.

I am not the person I thought I was. or the mom I thought I was. or the wife I thought I was. or the fill-in-the-blank I thought I was.

And in that realization, that exposure, that nakedness, I have found the cross.

The bloody, not pretty and packaged in a bow, cross.

All the shame, all the humiliation, for all the world to see. The cross.

Death to self. Death to thinking I am anything at all. Death to vain imaginations. Death to appearances. Death to what other people think. The humiliating cross.

This adoption has exposed things that I would have preferred not be exposed. I have learned things I didn't want to. I have confessed things I didn't know I was capable of. It has been so ugly.

And I wish I could say in this post, but NOW, after the death comes the resurrection, and there is LIFE and LIFE to the FULL. I wish I could say we are enjoying the resurrection phase now all the time.

We are experiencing the resurrection. In snippets. In moments. In glimpses. But mostly, we are still at the cross with our big ol' mess. We are incomplete. Broken. Messy.

But the resurrection is real. Redemption is real. If I did not believe that God heals the broken, I would despair. If I did not believe that God forgives sin, I would despair. If I did not believe that God can take what is dead and give it LIFE, I would despair.

But I do believe these things. I have doubted, and I have questioned, and I have despaired. There are times I have to scrape, to dig until there is dirt under my fingernails to believe.

But then I am back to the belief of Christ followers around the world,

"it is not the healthy who need a doctor,
but the sick...
For I have not come to call the righteous,
but sinners."
Matthew 9:12

I totally qualify as a sick sinner, so sign me up. Again.

This is the Man, the God, the Lord, the Savior, the Friend, the Lover, the Redeemer, the Healer I have given myself to again and again and again.