It just didn’t make sense that things weren’t working out exactly how we had anticipated.
Four years ago this week, my husband and I realized that God was leading us to adopt a child. Unbeknownst to us, God had been writing our adoption story for years, but it was this week four years ago that he revealed that plan to us. We were excited, nervous, scared, overjoyed, and just about every other emotion you could imagine. We never thought we would pursue adoption before trying for a biological child, but it just seemed to make sense. God was revealing his perfect plan to us and we were excited to begin the journey.
We started our home study, filled out mound after mound of paperwork, made a hundred phone calls, and were finally on the list to be able to adopt a child. Everything had fallen into place and the waiting began. We had anticipated the process to take about a year and were certain that within 12 months, we would be home with our child and everything would be picture perfect.
It was about this time that we started hitting every roadblock imaginable. Paperwork got delayed. The US government changed laws, which required us to find a new agency. There were changes in the country we were adopting from that halted the process. Within a few months, we were starting back at square one and my goal of being home with our child in 12 months was a distant memory. At this point, we had no clue when we would be bringing a child home, if ever. We felt defeated. We thought we had done everything right. God had led us down this path and we followed without abandon. It just didn’t make sense that things weren’t working out exactly how we had anticipated.
I was reminded of this on Sunday during Mark’s sermon from Luke 5. Here we see Jesus ask something of Peter that seems completely unreasonable. He asks him to trust him with something that seems impossible. Why would Jesus do this? Peter dropped everything and followed after Jesus when he called him to. Was that not enough proof that he loved him and trusted him? What was the point?
I realized I have said these exact same things to God over the last four years. “God, why aren’t you moving faster? Why isn’t this happening like we thought it would? You called us to adopt and we followed immediately! So why, now, are you making us wait? Why are you asking of us something that is unreasonable?”
Because his plan is infinitely better than ours.
Does it make sense to me? No. Do I always agree with it? No. Does it seem reasonable to me? No. And that’s ok. We serve a God who knows every tiny detail of every single story; he can be trusted to continue being the author.
We don’t know when our adoption will be finalized or even what the process will look like from here on out, but God does and he’s asking us to wait on him and his perfect timing. It isn’t always easy, but knowing that the creator of the universe is in control makes the uncertain journey worth it.
