It seems like everywhere I look, people just need hope. I was standing in the DHS office with E the other day when a young woman came in and told the security guard that she needed help; that her children had just been ‘taken’. Another woman stood in the parking lot next to my car, laboring on the phone with someone she was clearly (and loudly) at odds with. Cars ran with their windows down as folks waited on other folks to finish whatever business they had with the Department of Children and Family Services. The broken down building seemed to mock the broken down lives it was there to serve. Personally, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” (Proverbs 13:12) A longing fulfilled. I wonder in the grand scheme of things how many of the birth mothers we encounter even have any ‘longings’ let alone HOPE. I feel guilty when I lose hope in situations that really do seem hopeless (and are, for that matter, without God’s intervention!) I struggle sometimes with the magnitude of the calling God has placed on my life, and yet it always comes back to hope, and love, and surrender,and meeting the needs of one broken child or family at a time. How I pray that God will enable me (with all of my faults and frailties) to see the big picture-a picture that might just allow me to be a small part of a longing fulfilled.
This is a struggle I have, too. How to be a part of the redemption story for myself and a child…reconciling myself to being adopted and that being God’s plan for me. I love my mom and my birth mom. Yet, it is sometimes hard as we are preparing to adopt because I know from “this side” what it feels like. I want to be a positive part of someone’s story. But I want it to be positive for the birth mom as well…you have touched on what we all struggle with. I love the scripture. It is healing. Thanks.