It’s funny that this is now my 5th blog on this subject and we are actually still just waiting for our license.   We live in a broke and back logged state so there is no surprise in the waiting.  Our room sits ready, clean, and a bit sterile until personalities fill it with life and color.  As we wait I continue to see how God is working within my own heart to prepare me as well as my husband and children.  He continues to provide people of support, stories, testimonies, and articles to read to build a foundation of love and wisdom.

Our family continues to lose loved ones.  Tomorrow we say our earthly good byes to the man that was my last earthly father figure remaining, my maternal grandfather.  All the loss lately of fathers, aunts, uncles, friends leads me to a deeper level of empathy that can only scratch the surface of the loss that any child placed in our care will have endured.

As a child one of my greatest fears was to lose my parents.  I am not sure if that is a normal fear of a child.  Having been a pretty weird little kid now grown to weird little adult it is goofy stuff that I remember best.   When I was age five my parents went on a retreat of some kind I am sure for pastors.  A couple from our church kept me for about a week and another family kept my baby sister.   What I remember that week is that I never stopped crying.  The couple I stayed with were very sweet and loving.  They were at their wits end as to what to do to make me happy and to stop crying.  They bribed me with buying toys to no avail.  I am surprised I didn’t dehydrate from all the tears.  I wanted familiarity, normalcy, and security.  I felt scared and alone even though I was with nice people in a nice home.   The highlight of that week was getting to see my baby sister at church.  She was my family and someone I had a true bond with.  It was the longest week of my life.

Having been born to a very loving stable environment I really don’t know what it feels like to have the people that should be your rock and support fail you.  I don’t know what it is like to suffer through the death of a parent while still a child.  I have not been beaten or have had to watch anyone beaten and abused.   I have not had to watch sexual immorality or people getting high as if that is a normal everyday activity for a child to see or experience.   There is a loss of family and a loss of innocence for so many children and it makes my heart ache.  What I know is that week without my family even though I was safe and cared for made me so very sad.  I know that as we continue to lose more and more family my heart grieves and I am forever changed.  My prayer is that God will keep these feelings alive in me so that His love and compassion will flow through me as we press on with this journey.  He continues to prepare us and ready us for who He has planned.  It is hard not to get impatient in the waiting.  He reminds me that Noah didn’t build the ark in a day.  David had to wait to be king.  The Israelites were slaves for 400 years in Egypt.  Throughout scripture God refined and strengthened His people, prophets, and disciples through the process of waiting.  Then the glory of His perfect plan and timing was revealed.

“Wait for the Lord, be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.”  Psalm 27:14