One Year Since The Call

 

One year ago today I was working. It was the last day before the July 4th weekend. I was sitting on a conference call and I got a text from Scott that DSS had called. We’d been chosen as parents for a little boy.  I remember the rush of emotions that tried to spill out in tears. Joy. Anticipation. Fear. Panic. Elation. Relief. This was it! The day we’d waited for for years.

In the following days and weeks, I began to see God at work. How he’d planned this for a long time. While it’s been so very, very good, it also was the start of the hardest year of my life.

July 3rd, 2014 was the beginning of a rebirth.

This adoption is not all about me, but it has birthed something new in me. And while I think it birthed something new in a lot of us, it’s not my place to write about those.

So, let me tell you from my perspective. This has been the hardest, longest, most joyful-filled, frustrating, hair-falling-out, tears-rolling-down, happiest year of my life. This year we’ve been pressed down and shaken, busy forming both a new family and new individual inner beings. We have been wrapped in a cocoon, old things being transformed into new things.

I’ve been doing a study with IF:Equip on the beatitudes and my friend Hannah has shared so much wisdom about what it really means to be blessed.  She explains:

אשר, a Hebrew word that we translate “blessed” or “happy”, has at it’s core a picture of being held in the teeth, stretched, and straightened. Imagine what happens to a coiled rope if you pick it up, hold one end between your teeth and pull. All the kinks are straightened through pressure. That straightening under pressure is what Jesus meant when He said “blessed”.

We truly have been blessed.  God’s been working out my inner kinks through the pressure.

So today, on the anniversary of that beginning, it feels like another new beginning, the cocoon is opening and we’re beginning to see the fruits of all the labor. So much work is to be done, and yet I cannot help to stop and celebrate how far we’ve come–the absolute blessing he has placed in our lives.

Last night at dinner I announced that today was one year since our call. Lexi jumped out of her seat and ran over to Jac0b, who also jumped out of his seat to run away from Lexi. Lexi eventually caught him and gave him a big hug which he returned. Emma jumped up and did the same.

An hour later they were all fighting over virtual space on Minecraft.

That’s how this year has been. Moments of joy and frustration rolling one after another.

Today I celebrate God’s plans, God’s wisdom, God’s discipline, God’s love, God’s power, God’s authority. All and only through God has this been possible. God gets every single ounce of the glory. I could not have done this year without him. He’s so good.

But we also glory in our sufferings,

because we know that

suffering produces perseverance;

perseverance, character;

and character, hope.

Romans 5:3