plateau

i am in a funk tonight. which i hate because i know in my head that i shouldn't be. that i have no reason to be discouraged, no reason to be doubting goodness and truth. and yet my heart is struggling to hold on to that faith that has been our lifeline in this journey. i hate that my belief is so tenuous, that it can so easily be rocked. which makes me dislike where i'm at even more, that i'm not good enough, not steady enough for God. that somehow he is going to abandon me here because i didn't make the cut.

our papers have been mailed to china. and we should be ready in the next couple of weeks to officially begin the search for sarahjoy. that part is exciting. the not so exciting part is that we received a call this week from an adoption foundation informing us that we were not chosen to be given a matching grant. not the first place which had turned us down, but this foundation happened to be one i was really counting on. i thought for sure we would qualify and it had the potential to bring in a lot of money. they supply matching funds so that if we were able to raise $4000 from our friends and family, they would have matched that and we would be recipients of quite a bit of financial assistance.

but that is not the case.

and it has sort of rocked my world. i think the hard, cold truth is that i had put a lot of faith into that specific foundation, and had taken it away from God himself. moved my confidence from the Giver to the giver. and so when it fell through......it gave me a good punch to the gut.

so i am fighting hard to hold on to what we believe to be God's promise to us - that he will provide 100% for this adoption. it seems so far away. so impossible. and yet - here we sit with almost $19,000 that has been given to us. so why do i doubt he could come up with another $15,000? .........because i feel like he's done his part. that it's my job now. that somehow i have to come up with the rest. God's finished with his end of the deal. he drove me as far as he could - now it's my turn to hitchhike the rest of the way home.

so how does God want to provide? does he want to use those around us? i feel guilty asking people for money. there are so many people who need money. so many worthy causes. why do i think i should be the recipient? it seems so selfish. and i feel foolish. that there are those who look at us and think, "well, why the heck are they adopting another one when they can't even afford to get her here?" i'm self-conscious. i am worried about what other people think of me, of our family (big surprise there, i've been worried about what people think of me since the day i entered this world) i worry that if i walk into church with my kids dressed in babygap that someone is going to raise their eyebrows at our apparent need for financial help and call me a fraud. and no, i didn't pay full price, and yes, i do shop clearance, and someone gave me those shoes, and the rest i used a giftcard, and those are actually the only nice shorts the boys have and....

as a friend described, we are on a plateau and we need God to pull us up to the mountain top. he's gotten us halfway up the trail, a lot of hard work is under our belt. but now we find ourselves waiting for some more help. and that waiting is hard. that's the only way to put it. it just is hard.

so for those of you who pray, i would covet your prayers in the next few days. we are going to be making some fundraising decisions and i truly want them to be what God wants. i don't want to be trying to manipulate the situation through my human endeavors, on the other hand, if God is asking us to do something, i don't want to sit around and ignore that leading. so we need wisdom. and we need faith.

from the beginning, the word God gave me for this adoption was 'faithfulness'. my heart knew that God would prove himself faithful through sarahjoy's story. my head still knows that, but my heart is waffling.

God, draw near to this discouraged heart.

and when the time is right, bring us our little girl. provide the ransom for her life. she belongs to you first, and you have paid for her soul with your son. now help us to pay for her to be ours. to love and cherish. to bring to the knowledge of your saving grace. you know her. you have created her. keep her safe and warm. comfort her heart and bring us to her soon.