Levavi Oculus

The theme of my life is "Levavi Oculus." My Hollins girls are going to make fun of me for this but it's true. Even before I went to Hollins my favorite bible passage was Psalms 121 "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth."

This weekend I was struck in the face by how horizontal my gaze had become. In this whole process the Lord has been imploring me to look to him and instead I look to myself and worry when things spin out of my control. The message at church was a profound and moving one about taking a leap of faith and trusting the Lord to catch you when you fell. Instead we are like Wyle E. Coyote after he walks off the cliff and realizes he's falling and starts waving his arms, frantically trying to stay afloat.

I was struck by how insidious the enemy is, especially in this process. Somewhere along the way I convinced myself that the mere fact that I was adopting made me a good Christian and I could let the other stuff, the actual important stuff fall by the wayside to be replaced by busyness and service. And there were good, well meaning people reaffirming this for me everyday. Adoption doesn't make us good. Adoption proves how good God is.

I am now making a concentrated effort to go back to the things that are important. I am getting back to prayer, and bible reading. I have committed myself to attend church for the next 4 weeks in a row because corporate worship is important. Adoption is not the end of the journey, it's just the beginning of a bigger journey of parenthood and these are the things that will help make us good parents.

Already we are tested. I am determined to believe that God is in control of all of this. But there are papers I sent to the FBI and I don't know that they ever got there and I don't know that they are being processed. I've emailed them but I'm not guaranteed a response. The controlling part of me wants to just redo them, get a new tracking number and send them back in. This is the part of me that wants to ignore that still small voice that says don't worry, I've got it. I'm resisting. I'm waiting. God is a big God and he has Sam's best interests at heart.

I was also reminded this week that faith is the assurance of things not seen. It is not a great time to be adopting from Russia. I am not going to say that in the past week I have not asked God why this is so hard, why we couldn't have gone an easier way. But there are things at work that we cannot see and we have faith that God's plan is perfect.

God loves Sam more than I ever could. God has plans for him that I cannot fathom. God's timing is perfect. We rest in this knowledge and hope that God brings Sam home soon.