Wellsprings (part one)

The past couple of weeks are marked by sweet times with my Savior.  It began with several days of dedicated fasting and prayer for W, for our adoption process, for C4C, for all the folks at IBESR, and so forth, yet it turned into so much more.

It turned into a cup of spiritual water spilling over into my parched soul. 

Waiting is hard.  Adoption waiting is Excruciating.

For those of you that have followed our adoption journey from the very start--from China, to Taiwan, to Ethiopia, to Taiwan and now to Haiti--my waiting has been accompanied by many spiritual lessons along the way, which ultimately led to spiritual blessings.  Yet if there is one experience that could be found in each leg of our journey, I guess it would have to be "desert walking".  Like the Israelites of old who needlessly wandered in the desert for 40 long years, I find myself taking a sojourn into the scorching desert.

I don't plan to go there.  I don't want to go there.  Yet somehow in the mental confusion from a broken heart and cracked soul, I fall face first in the sand.

I'm not proud of it. 

I wish I could say that each time I've waited and dreamed and prayed for the day our next child would join our family, that I never faltered.  That my trust in God's perfect plan and timing never failed.  That I wore His strength like a garment and smiled and experienced joy at every turn.

I would be lying to myself.  I would also be lying to the novice adoptive parents who believe adoption is like the perfect fairy tale or inspiring Hallmark film.  Folks, adoption is HARD.  It is the hardest thing by far that Eric and I have ever chosen, but still we choose it.  Adopting a child will rip your heart out, crush it into a million pieces, but when God puts your heart back together -- and He will -- your heart is suddenly ten times larger.  That's what adoption does.

That's when the Wellsprings come.

(to be continued)