The Season of Waiting
We might not all agree about a lot of things, but I think I feel confident saying that none of us like waiting for things. I really don't like it. I'm not the most patient person in the world with the little things, but the big things are when I really tend to get...impatient.
In the years (many, many years) of singleness, I was embarrassingly impatient. It's hard to find a prayer in one of my many high school and college journals that doesn't focus wholeheartedly on begging God for a boyfriend. Begging Him to just tell me when it was going to happen.
When we were trying to get pregnant after our miscarriage, I was so horribly impatient. Month after month I agonized, counting the days until I could take a pregnancy test and getting disappointed.
When we accepted the temporary job in New Mexico but had to sit around for almost five months while the HR department filed all the necessary paperwork and we didn't know where we would live, how much of our stuff we'd be allowed to bring with us, or when we were even leaving, I just about lost my mind. JT and I stayed in a terrible cycle where just about once every couple of weeks I'd snap and have an enormous meltdown about how it was ridiculous to make people live like that, and how can they possibly not have the paperwork filed yet. Lord bless JT. That was probably the least patient season of my entire life.
I've learned a lot from those seasons of waiting.
After I met JT, I learned that basically every time I thought I knew who the "perfect" guy for me was, I was horribly and ridiculously wrong, and the guy who would end up being chosen for me was a whole world away from what I would have guessed. But he wasn't ready for me when I was longing for the companionship of a boyfriend and he certainly wasn't ready for me. God needed us both to draw closer to Him before we could be with each other.
After we got pregnant with Charlotte, my eyes were opened to how incredibly short my waiting had actually been. What had seemed like an eternity when we were in the thick of it had actually only been about 5 months, and God had allowed us both to draw closer to Him in our grief while we healed and mourned Sam. He gave us that time to heal while also giving me the gift of a new pregnancy just days before what would have been Sam's due date. A truly heartbreaking day was also full of fresh hope for us because of the new baby growing inside of me.
Once we got settled in New Mexico and I was finally able to take a step back and realize how silly I'd been that entire fall, I had to admit that God had always had it in His control. I still don't - and probably won't ever - understand how it could possibly take so long for a couple HR people to sign a few documents, but that's okay. We got more time in Virginia than we had originally thought we'd get before we left, and that ended up being a really good thing because we did not end up going back. After New Mexico it was on to Arizona, and those extra few months in Virginia were able to be filled with lots of memories that we wouldn't have had otherwise.
We are in a season of waiting right now with this adoption that has been really interesting. Everyone that has ever adopted or known anyone who has is familiar with the long waits. The long, agonizing periods of silence while you wait for someone to choose you.
But this particular route of adoption isn't quite like that. Our adoption agency actually matches us with a couple. We are not passively sitting in the system, waiting to be chosen; we are actively matched with a couple who has the same goals and preferences as us. Going into this process, that was really attractive to me. I loved the expedited timeline, I loved the idea of skipping right over that horrible period of silence and doubt and questioning why no one is choosing us. I was super on board with the active approach. The average amount of time given by our agency for the matching phase is a month, and when you take into consideration that we had extremely flexible and wide open preferences, we figured we would be matched in a shorter period of time than the average.
Right now, we are in week 6 of silence. We had kind of expected to know something in less than a month, but instead we are waiting considerably longer than the average. And the last week and a half have had me tapping my foot a little and pointing at the calendar as I side-eye the Lord and ask "have you been counting weeks? Because it seems like something's a little off here, God."
I say the season has been interesting, though, because it hasn't been a season of freaking out. It hasn't been a season of full blown impatience. It's been a season of doubting myself a little ("did I say something in our family profile that doesn't represent us well? Have we been matched with a couple that has turned us down?"), but mostly we've been at peace. In so many ways, the clock is ticking, but I trust Him. I trust His timing and I trust the people at our adoption agency and I trust His desires for our family. If there is anything at all that I've learned in my time with the Lord, it's that He does things on His schedule...often without human logic or reason. And that's okay.
So we wait. We keep waiting.
In the years (many, many years) of singleness, I was embarrassingly impatient. It's hard to find a prayer in one of my many high school and college journals that doesn't focus wholeheartedly on begging God for a boyfriend. Begging Him to just tell me when it was going to happen.
When we were trying to get pregnant after our miscarriage, I was so horribly impatient. Month after month I agonized, counting the days until I could take a pregnancy test and getting disappointed.
When we accepted the temporary job in New Mexico but had to sit around for almost five months while the HR department filed all the necessary paperwork and we didn't know where we would live, how much of our stuff we'd be allowed to bring with us, or when we were even leaving, I just about lost my mind. JT and I stayed in a terrible cycle where just about once every couple of weeks I'd snap and have an enormous meltdown about how it was ridiculous to make people live like that, and how can they possibly not have the paperwork filed yet. Lord bless JT. That was probably the least patient season of my entire life.
I've learned a lot from those seasons of waiting.
After I met JT, I learned that basically every time I thought I knew who the "perfect" guy for me was, I was horribly and ridiculously wrong, and the guy who would end up being chosen for me was a whole world away from what I would have guessed. But he wasn't ready for me when I was longing for the companionship of a boyfriend and he certainly wasn't ready for me. God needed us both to draw closer to Him before we could be with each other.
After we got pregnant with Charlotte, my eyes were opened to how incredibly short my waiting had actually been. What had seemed like an eternity when we were in the thick of it had actually only been about 5 months, and God had allowed us both to draw closer to Him in our grief while we healed and mourned Sam. He gave us that time to heal while also giving me the gift of a new pregnancy just days before what would have been Sam's due date. A truly heartbreaking day was also full of fresh hope for us because of the new baby growing inside of me.
Once we got settled in New Mexico and I was finally able to take a step back and realize how silly I'd been that entire fall, I had to admit that God had always had it in His control. I still don't - and probably won't ever - understand how it could possibly take so long for a couple HR people to sign a few documents, but that's okay. We got more time in Virginia than we had originally thought we'd get before we left, and that ended up being a really good thing because we did not end up going back. After New Mexico it was on to Arizona, and those extra few months in Virginia were able to be filled with lots of memories that we wouldn't have had otherwise.
We are in a season of waiting right now with this adoption that has been really interesting. Everyone that has ever adopted or known anyone who has is familiar with the long waits. The long, agonizing periods of silence while you wait for someone to choose you.
But this particular route of adoption isn't quite like that. Our adoption agency actually matches us with a couple. We are not passively sitting in the system, waiting to be chosen; we are actively matched with a couple who has the same goals and preferences as us. Going into this process, that was really attractive to me. I loved the expedited timeline, I loved the idea of skipping right over that horrible period of silence and doubt and questioning why no one is choosing us. I was super on board with the active approach. The average amount of time given by our agency for the matching phase is a month, and when you take into consideration that we had extremely flexible and wide open preferences, we figured we would be matched in a shorter period of time than the average.
Right now, we are in week 6 of silence. We had kind of expected to know something in less than a month, but instead we are waiting considerably longer than the average. And the last week and a half have had me tapping my foot a little and pointing at the calendar as I side-eye the Lord and ask "have you been counting weeks? Because it seems like something's a little off here, God."
I say the season has been interesting, though, because it hasn't been a season of freaking out. It hasn't been a season of full blown impatience. It's been a season of doubting myself a little ("did I say something in our family profile that doesn't represent us well? Have we been matched with a couple that has turned us down?"), but mostly we've been at peace. In so many ways, the clock is ticking, but I trust Him. I trust His timing and I trust the people at our adoption agency and I trust His desires for our family. If there is anything at all that I've learned in my time with the Lord, it's that He does things on His schedule...often without human logic or reason. And that's okay.
So we wait. We keep waiting.
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