Living While We Wait

                                                    Neil and I celebrating my birthday.

While we wait to welcome a child into our home life must go on. A life that is focused on the Lord, focused on each other, and focused on preparing our hearts and lives for the doors God will open for us. Trying to have a biological child has been taxing both emotionally and financially. There is always the hope that “this month” we will be pregnant. We have had that hope for over three years, still no child. Infertility hurts. It’s hard, it can be lonely, and painful in ways you didn’t think of or know existed when this journey unexpectedly began.

 We chose to walk down the path of adoption, as we had always planned on doing. God seemed to lead us to a wonderful small Christian adoption agency. There we are waiting for a birth mother/father to choose us. We began working with them in February. Still we wait. We have no idea how long we will wait. It could be a year, two years, three, or more. I recently read of a couple who waited for six years before they were able to adopt. In my heart I was crying, “Oh please Lord, don’t make us wait six years!”

What are we doing while we wait? We are living life. Living to the fullest, and learning patience in God’s perfect timing while we do so. We are saving the rest of the money needed for an adoption. With every dollar we add we are so grateful for the generosity of other's who have blessed us! We are adding the finishing touches on our home remodeling. (Painting and more painting is needed.) We are decorating two rooms in our home. One a boy’s room, one a girl’s room as we dream of the children who may live in them one day. In the meantime our nephews and nieces are able to use them when here. 

We are enjoying each other and growing in our marriage. We desire to serve the Lord together and be a blessing to those around us. We are enjoying all the times spent with our family and friends. We are delighting in our little nephews and nieces and all the days and times we spend with them. We enjoy drives on Sunday afternoons, stopping in a park for a walk on occasion. 

We are so happy for any friends or family who are able to welcome a new child into their home. We are very aware of the great blessing God has just bestowed on the family where that baby has been born. We are thrilled for the family who has been able to adopt a child and welcome them into their hearts. We are busy, we are happy, we are living in the present, and yes, we are waiting. One thing the last years have taught us is, we must live.

We don’t want to live our lives in constant anguish, or bitterness, or tears because we haven’t been able to have children. We are human, both of us. We have our times of tears, the moments of asking God why. The fears that we won’t “measure up” to whatever birthparents are looking for and we will never be chosen to be the family for a child. We daily hope that maybe “tomorrow” will be the day we get a call saying we have been “chosen”, yet with each passing day a new tomorrow begins.

 Something we have learned in this journey is of our heart’s great desire to have children. We talk and pray for the day God will bless us. You learn how precious something is to you when you can’t and don’t have it. There's nothing wrong with hoping for and longing for the day when we will be parents. The day when a child will bring such joy to our hearts. Yet, God is and must be our greater desire. We are living for Him, and because of that we can wait. We can learn to be patient. We can learn to have hope. We can learn to have peace in our stormy moments of fear and impatience. We can learn to be thankful for all the blessings and gifts God has bestowed on us. We can learn that God is love and to trust that He knows His plans for our lives.

So if you are wondering what we are doing. We are living while we wait.