Sunshine and Roses

Sunshine and Roses

 

 

   Some days hope breathes slow and shallow; other days it is bursting with excitement and expectation. When out of the blue God miraculously provided the means for us to go to Haiti to celebrate our son's 5th birthday with him, tears of joy fell like rain on our dry and weary souls. Sometimes the answers to our prayers come in a form and time that we least expect; and we are humbled beyond measure as a result.

    We have learned that when you ask God to move in your situation you relinquish all rights to your own understanding. It's all or nothing. Either we trust God or we don't. There's no halfway meeting point; no "I'll go this far, but no farther." And so I agreed to go all the way. And even on those days when I feel like quitting, I resolve to trust instead.

     As we turtled our way through the Haitian streets, I found myself feeling quite at home. Waves of weariness washed over the broken bits and pieces of my life, a life battered and bruised by the constant storms that seem more there than not. The debris left behind in the wake hardly seems worth the time and effort to shift through, and yet there is great treasure to be found, even in brokenness. Where the depths of heartache threaten to become a personal tsunami, I know pearls of wisdom and beauty are being formed.

    The brokenness of the world has become my own. No longer am I so self-absorbed that I cannot see beyond my own pain and suffering. I once was blind, but now I see. I see the hurting hearts, the hearts longing to be loved and made whole. I see the depths of depravity in the hearts of others, as well as in my own heart. I see the hate, the intolerance, the lack of love. I see all too well some days. I never knew broken could be so ugly and so beautiful simultaneously; for it is in our brokenness that we become whole.

    The real beauty is that God is drawn to our brokenness, to our weaknesses, for grace is His passion. The butterfly is proof that you can go through a tremendous amount of darkness and emerge bright and beautiful. And when I saw my son again for the first time in over a year, he was indeed bright and beautiful.

    The changes in our son brought us to tears. He is now more outgoing and playful, full of hugs and kisses and laughter. The vacant look in his eyes has been replaced by an awareness of the life before him. He has been bathed in countless prayers; he has been kept by his one true Father.

    Things don't always look like we think they should. I thought my son would be home for his 5th birthday. Sometimes the conditions of our miracle are not obvious until we surrender our preconceived notions of how things should go. Life is not all sunshine and roses; sometimes the sun will burn you and roses have thorns. Beauty is revealed and healing comes when we recognize that there is value in both serenity and suffering and that peace can coexist with pain.

    Love is our deepest longing, and yet the fear of it being absent is sometimes too great to bear, and so we hide in our self-made shells in a feeble attempt to love from afar. And while love can penetrate many things, it cannot penetrate our own fearful hearts if we continue to hide.

    Love is a choice. Sometimes it hurts to love; love requires risk and vulnerability and death to self. But love never fails to bring life. And our son is beginning to know that he is loved and in turn is taking the risk to love back.

    Be the bread. Be the bread that feeds hungry souls and you will find your own soul miraculously nourished.

 

 

 



In the End

   What do you do when the silence becomes deafening, when every report of praise brings heartache to your own soul, when talk of a breakthrough causes you to break down in tears, when you can't breathe because your heart is so heavy? What do you do when you believe in the impossible...for everyone except for yourself?

 

 

   The joy of adopting and the pain of the process make a sweet and salty mix, a combo that's not always easy to swallow. While with God every bitter thing is sweet, the bitter can sometimes overshadow the sweetness when the mixture seems to be such an unequal concoction.



 

   Intentional or not, people can be cruel. Personally, I'd like to smack down the next person who tells me that my son will come home "all in God's timing." While true, for someone who's been waiting for nearly four years, this is the equivalent of quoting Romans 8:28 to someone who's just lost a loved one. It stings.

 

   Or even worse, "Your son's not home yet because God still has things He wants to work out in you first before you're ready for him to come home." Yes, I was actually told this. And even though God is still working on me (and will continue to do so even when my son is home), I know this statement is not true. And yet it is painful. And cruel. And so very un-Christlike. As Proverbs 27:3 says, "Stone is heavy and sand a burden, but a fool's provocation is heavier than both."

 

   

 

   Our lives are not always a picture of stained glass perfection; sometimes the glass has jagged edges that can cut you. The heat of God's refining fire? It burns before it purifies. And so even though you are passionately pursuing the One who relentlessly pursues you, you may find yourself facing far more heat than you ever thought you could withstand.

 

    Though my faith sometimes flounders, the struggle will not destroy my faith, but will instead strengthen it. The very thing that the enemy intended to destroy me with will be the very thing that plants a powerful seed within me that will grow...and blossom...and produce unimaginable fruit that will in turn destroy the works of the enemy.

 

   So, what do I do in the face of all this? I choose to believe. I choose to believe God is who He says He is and will do what He says He will do. I do believe...but like the nameless man in the New Testament, I too must add, "Help my unbelief."

 

  

   There's nothing like an adoption to cause you to abandon your pretensions and posturing, to let go of your carefully constructed image and trade it all in for a richer, deeper, below-the-surface life...a life hidden in Christ where real growth and intimacy occurs. And in those depths you will be cut off from your very self and grafted into Christ. It is there you will find that, truly, nothing can separate you from the love of God.

 

   I didn't sign up for all the heartbreak and pain I've endured, but I wouldn't trade the person I've become through it all for anything. On the other side of the storm the sun shines again, the rainbow appears, and new growth is evident to all who have eyes to see.

 

   In the end, I will live without fear, I will love with abandon, and I will ultimately become something infinitely more beautiful than the woman I was before I started the adoption process. And even though my journey is not yet complete, the scars I've accumulated serve to remind me that I showed up for the game; and one day I will joyfully proclaim that I fought the good fight, I finished the race, I kept the faith.

 



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One Greater

   My heart is torn between two countries. It beats for my family in America and for my son in Haiti. But for all the love I have for my family, for a son yet to join us, there is One greater still.

   A love so deep, so wide, so uncalculable. A love so giving, so unconditional, so consuming. Like a fire raging out of control, is the love of the Father for me. And in the depths of my wondering, my questioning, He pursues me still.

   His is a love that never fails--how can this be? I fail daily, yet I am made in His image. No mistake is too big, no sin so great that the Father would turn away from me...ever. And yet, He turned away from His Son once...on my behalf. 

   Abba, this is a love I must have, a love that I want to wash over me and pull me under. I want to be swept away by the sheer force of Your passionate love for me.

   In the midst of sorrow, silence rings hollow in my ears. Ears straining, ever listening, ever waiting, for news that just won't come. And in this moment of sadness, of threatening despair, my heart dances for You alone.

 



  

Revealing Beauty

   Beauty is more than aesthetic pleasure; it goes deep to the heart of who we are. We were designed to reveal beauty--beauty from within and from without.

   Beauty is all around us. In the soft cry of a newborn baby. In the blossoming trees of early spring. In the tears of the brokenhearted. In the joy of a child not yet awakened to the troubles of the world. Beauty is everywhere; we need only to look with fresh eyes. Look around you right now: There's a beauty bomb just looking for a place to detonate.

  

   According to Psalm 19:1, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." All of Creation is an expression and extension of God's love. It is a living mosaic, an explosion of imagination, beauty, and wonder.

   Sometimes Creation simply defies logic: God didn't have to put 228 distinct muscles in a caterpillar's head, but He did; He didn't have to give every created star a name, but He did; and He didn't have to create you and me, but He did. Sometimes we just need to let go of logic and breathe in the beauty all around us...and breathe out our praise to the One that created it all.

   Revealing beauty is so important because it reveals God, the One who is beauty. We are only able to reveal beauty, however, when we are living with our senses fully engaged. What do you see, hear, taste, smell, and feel that needs to be revealed?

   As our lives move endlessly from season to season, from trial to trial, beauty never ceases to fade. Even when the winter season of our lives lingers longer than we'd like, beauty is buried just beneath the surface; it's only a matter of time before the new growth is revealed.

   Can a cemetery be classified as a thing of beauty? I believe that it can when viewed with the proper perspective. A child in a casket; a child in the arms of Christ. Painful? Absolutely. Beautiful? Most definitely.

   Our most powerful work comes when we reveal beauty in the midst of disappointment, rejection, pain, or tragedy. It is possible; with Christ, all things are possible.

   When the world drives you to your knees, find the beauty. It's there; I promise. Discover it for yourself and then reveal it to the world.

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