Introduction to Painful Waiting

A closed door. One earlier slammed in our face. Did we dare turn
the knob? Did we actually consider trying to walk through it again?
Our family attempted to adopt two siblings from Colombia in
2008, a seven-year-old girl, Viviana, and her eleven-year-old brother, Juan David. We blindly walked through the entire adoption process for them, as long and tedious as it was (not to mention costly), only to run straight into a wall, a dead end. 

Shock, bewilderment, humiliation, and guilt followed us for nearly a year afterward.We made all preparations for the arrival of those two precious Colombian siblings in our home, yet only empty rooms and beds remained. Closets full of clothing selected specifically for each child silently screamed in our faces every time we walked by them. 

Their absence left an awkward hollowness in our lives, one that no one understood, considering they were never our children in the first place. We still grieved as if we’d experienced a death in the family, even though they never even lived in our home.

Our seven-year-old biological son, David, responded with
incredible anger—toward Colombia for allowing its professionals to so misjudge his parents and toward God for not letting his siblings come home. Only three years had passed since God took his only biological sibling home to heaven via a miscarried pregnancy.

In the midst of our grieving, we found grace in the most
unexpected way. We found the son God meant us to find: Julian,
the older sibling of the two children we lost. He found his way into
our lives at the age of sixteen, and we finally met him face to face
in Colombia soon after his eighteenth birthday. As much as we loved his siblings, we knew they still had a chance to join a family. He didn’t. His age prevented him from finding a family of his own. He saw nothing but a bleak, lonely future—without his siblings, without his mother, without a soul to claim him. I say we
found him, but he actually found us. We both experienced a miracle
when God divinely crossed our paths.

We accepted it as our story. Embraced it. I recounted the
entire experience of grief, loss, grace, and healing in my first book,
Unexpected Tears. God prepared to write more in our story, though,
showing us that closed doors mean nothing to him. We never
dreamed how he would use that divine connection he’d given us
to Julian.

Only by turning the knob and walking through the door again
could our family finally find closure to that painful, bewildering
chapter of our lives. After we obediently took that first step, we let
God take us by the hand for the remainder of the journey where
he led us from the mountaintop to the valley and back to the
mountaintop again.

What we let go, he gave back. And more.

He indeed restored the years the locusts had eaten

(Joel 2:25).

For the rest of the story, check out my sequel, Painful Waiting, at http://www.amazon.com/Painful-Waiting-Leaning-Adoption-Surviving/dp/1943004072/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1460918555&sr=8-1&keywords=Painful+Waiting.

Thank you to my faithful blog readers. I will not be blogging any more of this book, but stay tuned for special offers at ABHBooks.