A clearer purpose?

Take us to Colombia

After all of the heartache

and so many tears,

Your purpose is finally

becoming a little more clear.

Could it be Colombia?

Is that where lies our ministry?

You asked me to love two of her children,

and now You gave me three.

I finally can see

maybe this all led to him,

but where we go from here . . .

I'm completely on a limb.

Less than ten months from now

He'll live completely on his own.

Please take us to Colombia

before he takes that step alone.

From everything he's told me

It's so clear he's in Your hand,

We are the answer to his prayer

when he asked for strength to stand.

Please take us to Colombia

if that's where we're meant to be.

Please reveal to us Your purpose

for leading this "child" to me.

http://watchlist.org/the-countries/colombia/

Latching on to HOPE

I waited patiently for the Lord; 

he turned to me and heard my cry. 

He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; 

he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. 

He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. 

Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord. 

Psalm 40:1-3

Surrender

Over time the anger within me subsided. I learned to accept the final outcome, even though my questions still begged for answers. My heart leaned more toward absolute surrender, and healing loomed closer than I knew.

The first weekend in May, I attended a spiritual retreat for women after a friend suggested it. I struggled with mixed feelings about the retreat. My husband attended the one for men the weekend before and came home different, almost like a new person. I knew I needed the time away, but I didn’t know a soul there. Since I’d already taken the time off of work and arranged for a substitute to cover my class for two days, I went, but reluctantly.

This retreat differed from any other retreat I attended in my life. The women did almost everything corporately, and the leaders packed the schedule tightly, leaving little room for reflection or time alone with God. However, God used a few periods of silence to speak to my heart.

I almost laughed when I heard the whole weekend themed around the concept of restoration.

“Okay, God, I’m listening. I’ve been on a quest for healing for the last seven months. I guess I’m exactly where You want me this weekend.”

Once again, the songs hit a chord deep within my soul as we sang about God turning our weeping into dancing, lifting a weight of sadness from us to give us joy again. Would God do that for me? Did I still have a reason to sing?

I met some incredible ladies that weekend, and I found a kindred spirit who remains a dear friend even today. She and I connected almost immediately, and we barely spent a moment apart whenever we found a chance to hang out together. I thanked God for giving me this new, dear friend to help me continue through this journey.

Many tears spilled that weekend, which happens often on spiritual retreats, but not a single tear belonged to me. I watched others bear their hearts to one another and let go of hurts they held onto for far too long. Seeing their walls come down helped me realize how many walls I’d built up around myself. I suddenly saw how many people reached out to me over the last several months only to have me push them away.

My heart finally softened. I really didn’t have to do this alone.

The final day of the retreat, God pressed heavily on my heart and asked me to trust Him. I wanted so badly to grow in my faith again, but as long as I held on to my whys, my faith couldn’t grow. I couldn’t grow. I needed to trust Him even if I never found answers. Did I trust His character more than I trusted in His power to bring it all together?

Holding on to Juan David and Viviana kept me stuck in a miserable pit of self-pity. I knew they held me back from the growth I desperately wanted. I silently cried out to God that morning, finally surrendering those children to their Father who gave them to me in the first place.

“God, I do still trust You with them, even if I never know anything else about them. I trust You to give them the family they deserve.” I felt like a huge weight lifted from my shoulders.

https://jmitchloves.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/open-hands/

Our final hour, each woman shared how God spoke to her during the retreat. I stood there in front of everyone with tears finally streaming down my cheeks.

“I came here grieving the loss of two children after a failed adoption. These have been the hardest six months of my entire life. God took my faith at its strongest point and crushed it.”

Then, without knowing where the words even came from, I continued, “But I believe He broke us, broke our family, in order to make something beautiful out of our story.”

 I did not realize God began to lift us out of the valley that very moment, carrying us right back up toward the mountain we confidently stood on a year ago.

Still walking

I counted it a blessing when I heard music beat in my heart again by the end of April that year. The passion and rhyme returned as poetry stirred within my soul. Words flowed from my pen, and I started to process and connect the recent past with the present and the future.

Still Walking . . .

Hearing Your call

so loud and so clear,

we had no other choice

but to swallow our fear.

We took every step

as a step in the dark,

not knowing what followed,

or if we hit the mark.

Would we have enough money?

That was our number one doubt.

Yet we knew that our God

Already planned it all out.

Would we have enough patience

to handle the change?

Was this parenting challenge

completely out of our range?

Every question that surfaced

He answered with peace.

He placed a call on our lives,

thus our fears had to cease.

He provided the money,

we were never in need.

He provided other families

whose advice we could heed.

It all came together,

our lives were prepared.

We eagerly awaited

a challenge many wouldn't dare.

Yet all we prepared for,

all the needs God met,

all for a journey with

a destination we know not yet.

So we continue walking

one blind step at a time,

not knowing where we're headed,

or how steep remains the climb.


https://www.blendspace.com/lessons/y6MWyXdWbEtfUA/footprints

Even tragedy has a purpose,

so I continue to believe

God is still at work

while He gives me time to grieve. 

Letting go

At the same time, I also began to devour books. Pursuing Viviana and Juan David’s adoption filled me with incredible joy and passion. I missed that joy. I craved it. I begged God every day to give it back to me. I read every book on joy I could get my hands on. In the mornings, I dug into Bible studies, learning Scripture after Scripture on the topic. I couldn’t read enough books about grief and healing, hoping to gain some kind of headway on the stages that came with grief.

Little by little, God repaired my heart. He had to break me completely in order to mold me into the person He created me to be. My screaming matches subsided, and our relationship grew civil again. The intimacy didn’t even come close to what it had once been, but deep down, I knew I could still trust Him.

I knew and believed our experience had purpose. It could not have been for nothing. God didn’t write the last page of our story yet. Meeting those children began something grander than I could imagine, something that could never come to life had we not crossed paths with them. I clung to that. I had to.

Julian wrote me another sweet e-mail in March, three months since I had contact with any of them.

“My brother and sister miss you. They think of you a lot.” Knowing they were okay helped me through this emotional drought, and I often wondered what I would have done if God didn’t connect us with that precious brother right before it all fell through. Without him, I would have never known anything more about them.

Several months eventually passed by without any more word from Julian. Viviana’s eighth birthday came in April of 2010, which meant Julian’s seventeenth birthday also passed four days earlier. I couldn’t send a gift or even a card since the orphanage officially cut off all my ties to them. They wanted the kids to let go of us in order to properly attach to the next family found for them. So, I sent my little princess a bouquet of prayers and kisses, and I asked others to send up a prayer for her, as well, to add to the beautiful bouquet.

I remembered thinking only a year earlier that she’d never spend another birthday without a mother because we’d complete her adoption before then. Unfortunately, she did celebrate her special day again without even the prospect of a mother in her life. As far as I knew, they hadn't matched another family to the kids yet.

When May approached and Julian didn’t send another e-mail, I accepted in my heart that our communication ceased. God gave him to us to keep us informed enough about the kids to make it through those rough months. Now I needed to allow God to heal me so we could move on. As long as I knew more about them, I couldn’t find closure to my grief. I thanked God a million times for that boy. Sending me a few simple e-mails did more for me than he ever knew. Yet now I let him go, too.

Letting go -- if it's meant to be yours, it will come back to you.

After sending a total of ten messages over a five-month period, Julian stopped writing to me. All three siblings now officially disappeared from our lives. I still dared to wonder if God might allow me to see them again someday. Would our paths ever cross again? Would we ever see our purpose for the role we’d played in their lives? Could a chance actually exist to someday meet Julian in person to thank him for what he did for us? 

Empty

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18

. . .

I slowly realized the music inside me had indeed died. I tried so hard for so long to keep my head held high and to keep moving. My strength weakened daily and eventually disappeared.  No passion or drive existed inside me. I lost all sense of purpose or mission. Without striving toward any new goals or dreams, the life inside me completely dried up, leaving me incredibly empty.

I had no words left to express, no song left in me to sing. I could write pages and pages, pouring out the contents of my heart, but the rhyme and the meaning didn’t accompany them. My poems expressed the songs of my heart, yet I no longer had a reason to sing. Even when I sat down to write a poem, no words came. I sat in utter silence, staring at nothing but a blank page.

I felt even emptier inside when I couldn’t write a single poem. But God used that barren feeling to let others’ music speak to me on a deeper level than ever before in my life. I clung to music in a new way. Songs like Nicol Sponberg’s “Resurrection”[1] truly expressed the cry of my heart for God to somehow create beauty out of the now shattered pieces of my heart. I desperately hoped God might breathe life back into me someday.

Christian contemporary music touched me deeply as I found myself relating so well to numerous songs. Many songs spoke directly to me, precisely describing my thoughts and feelings. If someone I never knew could write a song to articulate the depth of my heart so perfectly, I didn’t walk this road alone. They walked a similar road, too. Maybe they hadn’t faced the same circumstance, but they felt the same despair, connecting us. Their lyrics took a desperate heart and pointed it toward faith, giving me the hope I always found while writing my own poetry.

When I had no song left to write, God used others to write their music on my heart. What an impact these songwriters had on me to help me climb out of this lonely pit of grief.

---

[1] “Resurrection,” Nicol Sponberg, 2007, Curb Records.

A dark cloud settling

So, what came next? A constant need existed to occupy our minds. This busyness and sense of adventure really did help dull the pain we felt deep within, or at least it helped us avoid dealing with it until a later time when we might handle it better emotionally. First we took a long vacation, far away from home, and then we headed out on a short mission-trip, the very thing that made our hearts beat. After that, two precious little puppies filled our home with life again.

Suddenly the calendar didn’t hold a single new activity or adventure. I didn’t know how to handle that. Life started to dry up all over again.

My emotions didn’t expect a rollercoaster ride through those dry months. Oh, how it hurt to attend a “baby shower” for a fellow teacher adopting two children. I still remembered when she expressed a tug on her heart to look into adoption after I announced our original plans to adopt from El Salvador. Now, over two years later, she adopted not one, but two children. We inspired her to start the process. Now, a son and daughter filled her arms, while mine felt emptier than ever.

One of the couples we met in Austin finally traveled to Colombia to complete their adoption of a child they met the same summer we met Juan David and Viviana. I felt thrilled for them, but reading their blog tore me up inside. They posted pictures of places we planned to visit. They stayed in the very place we arranged to stay. Those were supposed to be our pictures, our adventures, and our memories. Yet they reminded us now of pictures we’d never get to take, adventures we’d never experience, dreams that would not become realities, memories we'd never build.

I tried to settle back into life and work, but the emptiness quickly resurfaced. While I paid no attention, the music in me died. I found myself in a spiritual and emotional drought. In times past, I always had my poetry as an outlet, as sad as it might have been at times, to get me past each hump in the road, to help me connect my inner and outer worlds, to help me process and make sense of what life handed me.

Now I had nothing left in me to even try to write. Empty pages stared blankly at me. With no new goals to reach for and no new adventures in sight, this unforgettable loss hung over like a dark cloud. I began to die inside, another stage of the grief I didn’t know would come.