When you're out of prayers but still have plenty of tears...

We have been waiting for our TA for 17 days. We thought it would come last week, but we missed making the cut off for that batch by one day. We held on to hope that it would arrive in time for us to leave next week but that didn't happen. Now everything in China is closed until Sunday due to a national holiday and the earliest we can expect our TA to arrive is next Wednesday. And now we may not be able to travel until May 21st. Truthfully, my heart is broken and I feel like I have been thrown onto an emotional roller coaster that just won't end. I have prayed and prayed and prayed. And then today when I found out we may face another 3-4 weeks before we hold our baby, I just had nothing else to pray. My prayers feel pointless and God is silent. When Justin asked if he could pray while I cried in his arms, my first thought was, "I don't want to hear any prayers. God's not listening." But while he prayed, his words somehow calmed my aching heart. Before he was done, my tears had stopped. And by the time he said, "Amen," I felt like God had listened...to us both.

I sent a message to my mom, telling her our latest news and said, "I am depleted."  She replied, "You rest. Let us do the praying."  

Was this the lesson I needed to learn? I have been walking this adoption journey with God, diving deeper and deeper into His grace.  I have left the shores of certainty and security and ventured into the rushing  waters of the "river whose streams make glad the city of God." I have been learning to stand as a woman who owns her strength and knows that God will sustain her through whatever trials she may face. I have taken Isaiah 61:3 and claimed it as my own:  "They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of The Lord for the display of his splendor."   I even wear this bracelet as a reminder every day   of the deeply rooted, unshakable strength that is promised to those who believe in Him.

This morning I would have said, "Lesson learned, God.  I've grown stronger this year. Now let's move on."

Today I realized that you can be strong one day and completely broken the next.

Perhaps the hardest lesson for me to accept is that this is not my journey to own. It belongs to all of us who are waiting to love that little boy unconditionally and forever. Amazingly, the list of those who journey with me is long and beautiful.  That is what God wants us to see and understand. That no matter how many steps down the road to Emmaus we take, we do not walk alone. No matter how full of the Spirit our hearts may be, sometimes we need to feel the Spirit's love in the arms of someone else- our husband, or our mother, or our sister. Someone who is there to hold us while we cry. We need to let them pray for us when we have run out of prayers to pray. 

God created us to be beings who live in community because God lives in community. The Father and the Spirit and the Son are One. "Let us make humankind in our image..."  Us...our....we.... 

This is my beautiful but bitter lesson. Walking in pursuit of God's true heart, learning to love as God loves, means accepting that life in the Spirit is life lived together. And sometimes it is ok to cry while someone else talks to God.  God will hear you both. 

(This is my treasured painting by the fabulous artist, Jaime Winton)