I don't know exactly when the switch flipped, but the nightmares have stopped. For weeks after Jeremiah's arrival I had recurring dreams involving Marisol (the birth mother) and a perpetual feeling of invalidation. They wouldn't be exactly the same dream, but more of a recurring theme where Jeremiah was crying and suddenly Marisol would walk in, pick him up and he would instantly calm. I would look at the way they were interacting and feel incredibly resigned, thinking, "Well, of course he'd respond to her like that........" I would wake up ready to sob, struggling to identify myself as Jeremiah's mother.......no, Jeremiah's REAL mother. Years upon years of keeping my dream of motherhood at bay resulted in weeks of this battle in my heart. My old tendencies wanted to remain guarded, ready for heartbreak, but life was not slipping away from me. Jeremiah was (and is, obviously) HERE and the only mother he knows, and will ever know, is ME. You'd think I'd just be ready to throw away how I used to live and think but it wasn't quite that easy. I basically had to give myself permission to love uninhibitedly, vulnerable and raw.
Sometimes I would wonder as I held him if he would be the same if Marisol had kept him. Would he cry the same way? Would his voice sound different? Would he smile as much? I honestly don't know why these things would ever enter my mind.......but they did, and as much as it hurt to even think them I couldn't deny my curiosity.
All of that has ended, thank God, and there is no denying who's Mommy around here. The other day as I was getting Jeremiah dressed in his pajamas he started kicking his legs, cooing so loudly that I started to giggle. He caught my eye and smiled so big, and got even more excited as he talked. There was so much undeniable joy in his face when he looked at me that I started to weep.......... "Ohhhhhh.......THIS!" I thought to myself, "THIS is what I've waited for.."
Like I said before, I don't know when the switch flipped but I'm just grateful it did. I'm still in as great a journey to trust as ever before. Trying to stay at home as much as possible and still pay for all our expenses is proving to be an extremely difficult task. I don't know why I thought we'd get a respite after Jeremiah arrived and maybe what this is revealing about me is that my mind will always be festering about something. How annoying.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
4 weeks already
I think I've just entered into that time in life where you don't want to ever blink. Time moves too fast. Jeremiah is a month old!
I must have exceeded the word limit on my last entry (I had written all about the time at the hospital and it got bumped off the site....grrrrr!), so I've been wondering how best to fill in the gaps but not bore with details.
The last thing I want to do is lose the awe of what has happened, to callous myself to the story because of the monotony of life. But life has a way of just sucking out the extraordinary.......if you let it. These last few weeks have been surreal, but challenging as emotions surfaced I wasn't prepared for.
Because we had to wait for such a long time I placed such anticipation on the fulfillment I would receive. True, the desire is fulfilled, but I also believed that my seven years of waiting stored up all the caretaking energy I would need. Not so much. I told myself that I would never complain; it didn't matter how tired I was or how many times during the night I woke up, I would love every single second of it. Did I somehow believe that I would no longer be human once becoming a mother? That whole never-complaining thing lasted for all of 4 days! I am loving every second of it, but I am being challenged every second of it as well.
We are now out of the 'legal risk' period. Marisol's parental rights were legally terminated over a week ago, and now the birth father registry has to be checked to see if Jeremiah's birth father has listed himself on it. It would mean that we would have to go through the process of terminating those rights as well. If he is not listed, then we are completely in the clear and can start the finalization process, which typically takes about 3 months in the state of Minnesota. These are just formalities for us because we have absolutely no worries about any hurdles from this point on. God's made sure to communicate that to us.
A few weeks back I attended a prayer service at church where our pastor read the passage of scripture we would be praying through. It was Ephesians 3:14-21, which has special significance to me. It is Paul's prayer for the church in Ephesus, but became my prayer as Lee and I struggled in ministry and started our infertility voyage all those years ago.
"When I think of the wisdom and scope of God's plan I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he would give you mighty inner strength through his holy spirit. And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God's marvelous love. And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high and how deep his love really is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it. Then you will be filled with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
Now Glory be to God! By his mighty power at work within us, he is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would ever dare to ask or hope. May he be given glory in the church and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever through endless ages. Amen." (NLT)
As I sat in church reading and praying God said, "See, Tiffany? Don't you see now what I was doing?" The message could have been, "You ungrateful child, are you happy now?"
But there was grace where there could have been judgment.
Out of God's love for me, for Lee, and especially for Jeremiah we have become this ever-anticipated family. I wish I had waited better. All those years of praying and weeping and questioning why God would allow us to suffer through such tender disappointment resulted in an incredible outpouring that was infinitely more than we ever could have hoped. Can I ever again doubt God's love for me? I keep remembering a comment my mom made to me several times over the last few years when I would watch God bless other people while I suffered. "Tiffany, do you think God loves you any less than He loves them?"
"'For I know the plans I have for you', declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a future and a hope.'" Jeremiah 29:11
Saturday, October 20, 2007
The whole story.
I've wondered a million times about the best way to tell this story, but I think what's best is to just start and hope that the pieces fall into place along the way. I'm going to back up to about mid-July, when we were in process of waiting on a birth mother from California to decide if she indeed wanted us to adopt her baby. While that opportunity was still lingering we received a phone call from my mom one evening after she had returned home from work, and I could tell by the apprehension in her voice that she had some trepidation about what she was going to say. She had heard about another young girl who was pregnant and didn't plan to keep the baby. Would this be something we would at all be interested in pursuing? My response was not positive. It was more like, "Are you kidding me? I'm sick and tired of hearing about these girls, when none of them are actually serious about going through with it." I did not want to tell Lee. I remember looking over at him after I hung up with my mom, feeling this weight in my stomach thinking, 'Can I put him through this conversation again? How much can we take?'
"What now?" Lee asked me. ( I think he already knew what was up by the look on my face).
"You don't want to know," I replied.
"Well?"
So I began to tell him what my mom had told me. By the end of the story both of us were stinking MAD. We were trying not to lump every birth mother into a heaping pile of indecision, unstability, and mistrust but disappointment after disappointment can give every girl the same face, the same story, the same heart and we were done.
Our conversation was filled with comments like, "Something just doesn't seem right about this one," and, "Of all the options this one seems the LEAST likely to happen", and, "What's this girl's angle? What does she want?" We ranted, we did a little yelling, but as loud as we voiced our skepticism I could not shake this voice that said, "But what IF? What if this IS the one that works?"
"Quiet!" I remember thinking, "I don't want to wonder!" But it wouldn't go away, and quietly I whispered the 'what if' to Lee. I'd like to say that we came to a wonderful conclusion to trust God and venture once again into the uncertain realm of birth mother conversations, but we blew it off. Not completely, but we didn't entirely embrace the possibility either. We just didn't think about it. For weeks. We thought so little of it that I enrolled for classes through December and scheduled a roofing company to come replace our roof (turns out we had hail damage and only had to pay the deductible -praise God!). So when we got the call that the California situation was closed for us we threw this one out the window as well.
I had just finished the last day of my first week of classes, went out to the truck to head for home and noticed that my mom had tried to call my cell phone like 500 times. When I called her back she sounded a little excited. "I just met Marisol," she told me.
"What?"
"Yeah, Cristina brought her into the clinic today and they're wondering whether or not we're going to do this adoption!"
"Wait.....what?!?"
"Marisol would like to meet you. I did pull up your blog site so she could at least see your picture, but how soon do you think you could come down to the cities to meet?"
"What?!?" ( I know, a bit redundant, but I was a little shocked. After all, hadn't this one seemed the LEAST likely to happen?)
After I stammered out a few unintelligible things we decided to try to meet on Monday, Labor Day. I didn't have classes, and most people (minus Lee) wouldn't be working. My mom confirmed with Cristina that it would indeed work for them and there we were, set to meet.
I drove down to the cities on Monday morning, but before I left had that great conversation with God (check my early September entry for details), and spent the afternoon at my parents' house making flash cards for my nursing class trying not to let the anxiety take over me. I remember standing at the kitchen window, the same one my mom has stood at for countless years waiting for countless people to arrive, watching as Marisol came walking up to the door. She didn't look obviously pregnant, and I had to fight the urge to doubt her situation. She was very sweet, but very timid and all the while I kept thinking, "One wrong move, Tiffany, and you'll have her running out to the car!"
While Cristina assisted my mom in the kitchen Marisol and I found ourselves sitting together in the living room. Me, with my extremely limited Spanish, and Marisol with her limited English managed to actually have a conversation. My sweet Dad caught a picture of us, and it turns out to be the only picture of Marisol we have, so I have to treasure that picture forever even if I do look like a horse in it.
At dinner she sat next to me and I kept shooting glances at her belly, wondering about the baby boy that was there. After dinner she excused herself and Cristina got a chance to fill me in on how they met. I'm sharing it, because I feel like I need to, like God wants it to be told. I do not however want it to communicate negatively in any way about Marisol. Here's my paraphrase of Cristina's story that she told to me that night:
I was working at Hennipen County Medical Center one day and was reaching the end of my shift. I had 15 minutes left before I was supposed to clock out. Now my job only pays in 4 or 8-hour increments, no partial hours or anything. So when a staff member came into the room asking for an interpretor I almost didn't take it, knowing I only had a few minutes left of my shift, but no one else offered, so I did. I didn't realize why I was supposed to be there until I started interpreting for this young girl. She was there to get a referral for an abortion. As the nurse took all her measurements I knew I was supposed to intervene. After the information was collected about how far along Marisol was in her pregnancy the nurse told her that she had one day left before it would no longer be legal to have an abortion in the state of Minnesota. After talking with Marisol the nurse left to go call the abortion clinic across the street to make an appointment for the following morning. I could not stay silent. 'Don't do it, Marisol. Don't kill your baby. God will bless you if you spare the life of your child. You cannot do this- I'll help you. There are lots of people who would love to adopt your baby- don't go through with this abortion.'
I convinced Marisol to come home with me, that we would talk it out and come up with a plan. She agreed to talk with me more about it. I realized that I could have lost my job for intervening like I did, but I knew that Jesus would protect me for doing His will. I told Marisol to meet me outside the front doors because I had to go into the employee area to clock out and get my purse. So I went and did that, grabbed my stuff and went outside, but Marisol was nowhere to be found. She was gone, like gone forever. At that moment everything completely drained out of me and I wept and said, 'God, I did my best to save that baby,' and I prayed for the impossible to happen. I grabbed my car keys and headed to where my car was parked. I was just about to get in when something caught my eye. It was Marisol and she was running.......running back to the front doors where we were supposed to meet! To this day I do not know what made her come back, but she got in the car with me, came to my house and made ME dinner. We talked for hours and I agreed to help her find a family for her baby.
A few days later I went to my chiropractor's appointment and there I overheard Jane talking about your situation to somebody else. Goosebumps went over my entire body and I went up and talked with your mom, saying 'You wouldn't believe this! I just agreed to help this young girl find a family to adopt her baby.........and here we are!
"What now?" Lee asked me. ( I think he already knew what was up by the look on my face).
"You don't want to know," I replied.
"Well?"
So I began to tell him what my mom had told me. By the end of the story both of us were stinking MAD. We were trying not to lump every birth mother into a heaping pile of indecision, unstability, and mistrust but disappointment after disappointment can give every girl the same face, the same story, the same heart and we were done.
Our conversation was filled with comments like, "Something just doesn't seem right about this one," and, "Of all the options this one seems the LEAST likely to happen", and, "What's this girl's angle? What does she want?" We ranted, we did a little yelling, but as loud as we voiced our skepticism I could not shake this voice that said, "But what IF? What if this IS the one that works?"
"Quiet!" I remember thinking, "I don't want to wonder!" But it wouldn't go away, and quietly I whispered the 'what if' to Lee. I'd like to say that we came to a wonderful conclusion to trust God and venture once again into the uncertain realm of birth mother conversations, but we blew it off. Not completely, but we didn't entirely embrace the possibility either. We just didn't think about it. For weeks. We thought so little of it that I enrolled for classes through December and scheduled a roofing company to come replace our roof (turns out we had hail damage and only had to pay the deductible -praise God!). So when we got the call that the California situation was closed for us we threw this one out the window as well.
I had just finished the last day of my first week of classes, went out to the truck to head for home and noticed that my mom had tried to call my cell phone like 500 times. When I called her back she sounded a little excited. "I just met Marisol," she told me.
"What?"
"Yeah, Cristina brought her into the clinic today and they're wondering whether or not we're going to do this adoption!"
"Wait.....what?!?"
"Marisol would like to meet you. I did pull up your blog site so she could at least see your picture, but how soon do you think you could come down to the cities to meet?"
"What?!?" ( I know, a bit redundant, but I was a little shocked. After all, hadn't this one seemed the LEAST likely to happen?)
After I stammered out a few unintelligible things we decided to try to meet on Monday, Labor Day. I didn't have classes, and most people (minus Lee) wouldn't be working. My mom confirmed with Cristina that it would indeed work for them and there we were, set to meet.
I drove down to the cities on Monday morning, but before I left had that great conversation with God (check my early September entry for details), and spent the afternoon at my parents' house making flash cards for my nursing class trying not to let the anxiety take over me. I remember standing at the kitchen window, the same one my mom has stood at for countless years waiting for countless people to arrive, watching as Marisol came walking up to the door. She didn't look obviously pregnant, and I had to fight the urge to doubt her situation. She was very sweet, but very timid and all the while I kept thinking, "One wrong move, Tiffany, and you'll have her running out to the car!"
While Cristina assisted my mom in the kitchen Marisol and I found ourselves sitting together in the living room. Me, with my extremely limited Spanish, and Marisol with her limited English managed to actually have a conversation. My sweet Dad caught a picture of us, and it turns out to be the only picture of Marisol we have, so I have to treasure that picture forever even if I do look like a horse in it.
At dinner she sat next to me and I kept shooting glances at her belly, wondering about the baby boy that was there. After dinner she excused herself and Cristina got a chance to fill me in on how they met. I'm sharing it, because I feel like I need to, like God wants it to be told. I do not however want it to communicate negatively in any way about Marisol. Here's my paraphrase of Cristina's story that she told to me that night:
I was working at Hennipen County Medical Center one day and was reaching the end of my shift. I had 15 minutes left before I was supposed to clock out. Now my job only pays in 4 or 8-hour increments, no partial hours or anything. So when a staff member came into the room asking for an interpretor I almost didn't take it, knowing I only had a few minutes left of my shift, but no one else offered, so I did. I didn't realize why I was supposed to be there until I started interpreting for this young girl. She was there to get a referral for an abortion. As the nurse took all her measurements I knew I was supposed to intervene. After the information was collected about how far along Marisol was in her pregnancy the nurse told her that she had one day left before it would no longer be legal to have an abortion in the state of Minnesota. After talking with Marisol the nurse left to go call the abortion clinic across the street to make an appointment for the following morning. I could not stay silent. 'Don't do it, Marisol. Don't kill your baby. God will bless you if you spare the life of your child. You cannot do this- I'll help you. There are lots of people who would love to adopt your baby- don't go through with this abortion.'
I convinced Marisol to come home with me, that we would talk it out and come up with a plan. She agreed to talk with me more about it. I realized that I could have lost my job for intervening like I did, but I knew that Jesus would protect me for doing His will. I told Marisol to meet me outside the front doors because I had to go into the employee area to clock out and get my purse. So I went and did that, grabbed my stuff and went outside, but Marisol was nowhere to be found. She was gone, like gone forever. At that moment everything completely drained out of me and I wept and said, 'God, I did my best to save that baby,' and I prayed for the impossible to happen. I grabbed my car keys and headed to where my car was parked. I was just about to get in when something caught my eye. It was Marisol and she was running.......running back to the front doors where we were supposed to meet! To this day I do not know what made her come back, but she got in the car with me, came to my house and made ME dinner. We talked for hours and I agreed to help her find a family for her baby.
A few days later I went to my chiropractor's appointment and there I overheard Jane talking about your situation to somebody else. Goosebumps went over my entire body and I went up and talked with your mom, saying 'You wouldn't believe this! I just agreed to help this young girl find a family to adopt her baby.........and here we are!
Monday, October 15, 2007
Our boy is HOME!!!
Wow!!! I cannot even begin to explain the utter amazement at what God has done. I'll go into more details later, but wanted to post pictures as soon as we got home.
Jeremiah Nathan Gear was born at 9:52am on Sunday, October 14 (7lbs 19.8" long). He is absolutely beautiful. The most amazing thing is this: I do not remember a beginning of him......it feels like he's always been with me.
Look!!! Look at what God has done!!!
We received a card this afternoon that says this:
JUST THINK
Your SON is here not by chance, but by God's choosing.
His hand formed him and made him the person he is.
God compares him to no one else- he is one of a kind.
Your son will lack nothing that God's grace can't give him.
God had allowed your son to be here at this time in history to fulfill
His special purpose for this generation.-Roy Lessin-
"Everyone shall stand in awe and confess the greatness of the miracles of God...they will realize what amazing things He does." Psalm 64:9
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
A new due date.
It appears that after meeting with a doula, Marisol's due date is more like the 14th than the 10th. Like a friend of mine said, "You can't change those things NOW!!!" But so it seems that our anxious, 'nothing-will-cure-this-itch-except-going-to-the-hospital' time continues. Fortunately I've had plans for this week that I've been able to continue in, but poor Lee has had nothing to do to pass the time except play Halo, which I am very quickly becoming tired of. There's this beeping sound as the character's energy field is recharging that I could go without hearing for the rest of my life. (Trust me, I already know that I know too much about the game).
But like I said, poor Lee has had nothing to occupy himself with. It's been rainy for weeks now, and the short glimpses of clear skies are spent walking the dogs who, I swear, sense the anticipation in the air. I've never seen them so pent-up, so needy! Walking them is good exercise and a great excuse to get out of the house, but even that doesn't come close to scratching the itch.
We packed a few travel bags and have them sitting on the bedroom floor. I can't take them to the car just yet because I'm partially living out of them, and what else would I have left to do? At least I can pack and repack a bazillion times if I need to find something to do, but once they're in the truck? Well shoot, you can't undo that.
In this wait for the inevitable rush of panic (Lee says, "No panic, Tiffany...." But I say, "Who are we kidding?"), we find ourselves saying to each other, "What should we do with these last few days of 'just us'?" It's hard to believe that from here on out it will never be just the two of us and to be honest, it's bittersweet. We haven't yet tasted the joy of parenthood and family that we've been longing for, but we're not quite ready to change what we've been. I think who we are is worth hanging onto during our venture into parenthood, and I think we're just stubborn enough to see it through. We continue to be challenged with enjoying these last days together all the while thinking, 'For crying out loud, phone. Ring already!'
But like I said, poor Lee has had nothing to occupy himself with. It's been rainy for weeks now, and the short glimpses of clear skies are spent walking the dogs who, I swear, sense the anticipation in the air. I've never seen them so pent-up, so needy! Walking them is good exercise and a great excuse to get out of the house, but even that doesn't come close to scratching the itch.
We packed a few travel bags and have them sitting on the bedroom floor. I can't take them to the car just yet because I'm partially living out of them, and what else would I have left to do? At least I can pack and repack a bazillion times if I need to find something to do, but once they're in the truck? Well shoot, you can't undo that.
In this wait for the inevitable rush of panic (Lee says, "No panic, Tiffany...." But I say, "Who are we kidding?"), we find ourselves saying to each other, "What should we do with these last few days of 'just us'?" It's hard to believe that from here on out it will never be just the two of us and to be honest, it's bittersweet. We haven't yet tasted the joy of parenthood and family that we've been longing for, but we're not quite ready to change what we've been. I think who we are is worth hanging onto during our venture into parenthood, and I think we're just stubborn enough to see it through. We continue to be challenged with enjoying these last days together all the while thinking, 'For crying out loud, phone. Ring already!'
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Entrusted
October 03, 2007
From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.
Luke 12:48
I'm not exactly sure how I feel about this verse today. As I belted in the base to the car seat I thought about how odd it felt to climb on up on that awkward thing while I tried my hardest to tighten the strap. It reminded me of how many times I had watched my siblings and friends do exactly that while I thought, "Is it really necessary to climb in there? Come on...." Go ahead, laugh....I admit I'm a total novice. Apparently watching people does not automatically make you a professional when it comes your time to do it.
But what struck me about the experience was a note I found in the depths of my truck. I had written it at work because on the back of the paper is the cash register report for closing the shop. It obviously was sometime in the spring, before May:
'Yesterday was a dust day. As a Christian I place so many expectations of perfection on myself, forgetting time and time again that anything good I do is only because Christ resides in me. He remembers that we are but dust.....
Sometimes He gives us days like yesterday to remind us of just that. There was actually nothing about yesterday that should have aroused such deep emotion in me, but whoa, I was a mess. At work I distracted my mind with lattes and sudoku, but I had woken up in such a funk that nothing could really keep my feelings of impending doom at bay. I honestly believed we were going to get a phone call saying this whole thing had been called off. Last night we went to dinner at our friends' house and I got a chance to hold a 5 week old baby. It was weird! I felt totally uncomfortable; partly because someone just walked up to me and asked if I wanted to hold him when I didn't even know who he belonged to, and partly because for some odd reason my mind has not been able to actually envision a child at the end of this process....'
And there the note ends. It looks like I may have written more but I haven't found the other half yet. I think the thing worth mentioning here is the state of mind I had then versus what I find myself in now. I don't have any feelings of impending doom. Anxiety? Heck, yes. Occasional panic? Sure, that too. Excitement? Absolutely, but impending doom? No. I keep trying to decipher if I'm feeling any of that, but it seems like the doubting voices have been silenced. I thought in church on Sunday about the possibility of this whole thing going sour as well. Before, thoughts like those would have immediately been followed with the, "Don't you dare, God"s and the "I don't know what I would do if this didn't work out"s. But on Sunday, when the thought crossed my mind, it lacked devastation. What in the world!?!
So how in the world does this relate to the passage in Luke? As emotionally complicated and mentally exhausting as this whole process has been, I feel like it is also something with which God has entrusted us. Like the memorable dialogue in the movie, Evan Almighty, if we ask God for patience does He just give us patience, or does He provide an opportunity for us to be patient? If we ask God for courage does He just give us courage, or does He provide an opportunity for us to be courageous? So each experience, each struggle has been entrusted to us, but the purpose of them is not in just reaching the end. It's preparation for more.
From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.
Luke 12:48
I'm not exactly sure how I feel about this verse today. As I belted in the base to the car seat I thought about how odd it felt to climb on up on that awkward thing while I tried my hardest to tighten the strap. It reminded me of how many times I had watched my siblings and friends do exactly that while I thought, "Is it really necessary to climb in there? Come on...." Go ahead, laugh....I admit I'm a total novice. Apparently watching people does not automatically make you a professional when it comes your time to do it.
But what struck me about the experience was a note I found in the depths of my truck. I had written it at work because on the back of the paper is the cash register report for closing the shop. It obviously was sometime in the spring, before May:
'Yesterday was a dust day. As a Christian I place so many expectations of perfection on myself, forgetting time and time again that anything good I do is only because Christ resides in me. He remembers that we are but dust.....
Sometimes He gives us days like yesterday to remind us of just that. There was actually nothing about yesterday that should have aroused such deep emotion in me, but whoa, I was a mess. At work I distracted my mind with lattes and sudoku, but I had woken up in such a funk that nothing could really keep my feelings of impending doom at bay. I honestly believed we were going to get a phone call saying this whole thing had been called off. Last night we went to dinner at our friends' house and I got a chance to hold a 5 week old baby. It was weird! I felt totally uncomfortable; partly because someone just walked up to me and asked if I wanted to hold him when I didn't even know who he belonged to, and partly because for some odd reason my mind has not been able to actually envision a child at the end of this process....'
And there the note ends. It looks like I may have written more but I haven't found the other half yet. I think the thing worth mentioning here is the state of mind I had then versus what I find myself in now. I don't have any feelings of impending doom. Anxiety? Heck, yes. Occasional panic? Sure, that too. Excitement? Absolutely, but impending doom? No. I keep trying to decipher if I'm feeling any of that, but it seems like the doubting voices have been silenced. I thought in church on Sunday about the possibility of this whole thing going sour as well. Before, thoughts like those would have immediately been followed with the, "Don't you dare, God"s and the "I don't know what I would do if this didn't work out"s. But on Sunday, when the thought crossed my mind, it lacked devastation. What in the world!?!
So how in the world does this relate to the passage in Luke? As emotionally complicated and mentally exhausting as this whole process has been, I feel like it is also something with which God has entrusted us. Like the memorable dialogue in the movie, Evan Almighty, if we ask God for patience does He just give us patience, or does He provide an opportunity for us to be patient? If we ask God for courage does He just give us courage, or does He provide an opportunity for us to be courageous? So each experience, each struggle has been entrusted to us, but the purpose of them is not in just reaching the end. It's preparation for more.
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