Our Adoption Story - Part 2: The Wait
Let me just start by saying that as I sit writing this post watching my sweet blessings play together, I have never been so sure of anything in my life - the wait is SO worth it!
God knew before we ever started the adoption process or before our daughters were even conceived that they would be Hyatt girls. Jeremiah 29:11, "'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future."
Can I just say that looking back and being able to say that is SO much easier to say than saying it while you wait? I had some great times of trusting the Lord in our wait and some dark days where I wondered if it was ever going to end. I remember one day in particular where the wait had started to drag on longer than I thought it would and dates and events passed with no call and still no baby in my arms. I called my sister crying just wondering if I was failure - were expectant mothers looking at our photo book and not picking us? Would we ever get a call? Well crazy enough, the week I called her and had reached a breaking point was the same week our daughters were born. (We wouldn't know about them for a couple more weeks though!)
Some of you reading this may be in a similar time of waiting - maybe for a phone call, like we were for 5 months, or for a child, like we were for 3 years, or maybe you're waiting on something else - we all will go through a stage of waiting at some point in our lives.
Through our journey of waiting for a child - both struggling through infertility and then waiting for THE CALL and most recently waiting for finalization, I have realized what makes waiting so hard is not knowing when it will end or why God is making us wait. I read through a devotional while we were on our journey of trying to start a family called Moments for Couples Who Long for Children (I highly recommend for anyone going through a similar journey), and in that book it said, "We imagine that if only God would tell us the day and time that our wait will end, we could relax and pace ourselves during our wait." Isn't that the truth?!? If God would have just said, Lauren - you are going to wait 3 years to hold your precious baby, and you are not going to conceive them biologically, but I am going to give you two miracle little girls, I could have saved myself a lot of worrying, a lot of heartache, and I think I could have enjoyed the time Dale and I had just the two of us a little bit more. (I think we would have planned a few more vacations!!)
Although it seems like it would be really awesome to see our whole lives laid out before us, God only shows us what's right before us because I mean could we really handle seeing how our lives unfold? How boring - it would be like watching a movie and already knowing the ending, or better yet, re-watching a movie. (For me that probably wouldn't be so bad since I cannot remember what happens in movies for the life of me!!!) But you get the point. Not being privy to how our life turns out requires us to put our trust in God's plan and reminds us that we are not God and we are not in control, but as it says in Exodus 14:14, "The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still."
So if you are in a season of waiting, I encourage you to make the most of whatever your current season is - whether it's just you and your spouse, you living in a place you're wanting to move away from, you working in a job you're tired of, you being single and wanting a relationship or whatever it might be - enjoy the good things about where God has placed you because you may never be back there and God has placed you there for a reason - to teach you something, to touch someone, or to allow just the right set of circumstances to occur for His very best plans to unfold in your life.
I'm not guaranteeing that everyone will get a call about twin girls or live happily ever after, but I can say with confidence that something will happen that will change your current circumstances and you can look back with thankfulness for everything you learned and experienced in that period of waiting, or you can look back with regret of all the things you could have or should have done.
I for one know that I am without a doubt a better mom than I would have been 3 years ago, and I cherish my daughters more now than if I never would have had to wait for them. God is good in the waiting, and He is SO good when He blesses His children.
Stay tuned to hear how our long season of waiting ended in just one phone call!
