There have been lots of phases in my life. I went through a lengthy tomboy phase that included a bowl cut, Umbro shorts every day and dreams of joining any and every professional sports organization as the first female player to infiltrate their fraternity. I went through a phase in college where I had NO dreams or direction (thus, the lack of a diploma). But somewhere in between those two very awkward times in my life, I started writing. I dreamed of writing a book once. For a people pleaser like myself, publishing a book would classify me as a glutton for punishment. If you put it out there, someone is bound to read it.....and chances are, they might not like it. Once I realized that most of the characters in my book are still alive and would surely excommunicate me if I published their stories, I started blogging. And it turns out that publishing each and every blog post is much like publishing a book. There is a raw vulnerability that overwhelms me with each post and there are days when I have SO much to say, and not enough fight left in me to sustain the opinions of some readers. There are a lot of topics that I will never touch because I don't feel that I have anything constructive to say about them. But when I do write, its because I don't feel like God gave me these words to keep to myself. He didn't afford me the ability to form sentences just for me to scribble in a notebook. So tonight, I don't want to write this. I tell God, "these are MY emotions and MY gut wrenching struggles and MY jump around triumphs!" and God says "no. They aren't YOURS". I have written and deleted and mulled over and reworked this post for a week, each time walking away and saying "tomorrow". Each "tomorrow", God taps me on the shoulder and says "today". Tonight, I'm posting out of obedience. Because the reason we breathe, is to tell of His glory.
My last post talked about our closeness to God on our first trip to Ukraine. Jake and I both felt closer to God than ever before. We came home and started preparing our home for David and in the blink of an eye we were back on a plane, and subsequently a train, and headed to Bene, Ukraine once again. The second trip was harder for me. I cried through most of the travel (ask Jake. I promise he remembers LOL). I was in mourning. I mourned the ease of a family of 4. I mourned the simplicity of praying over children that weren't broken inside. I mourned the routine that I had established just me and Zella and my paintbrushes every day. If there was anything that we found comfort in at home, I wept for its' loss. And now I know, I was weeping for the loss of my self. And that's not a bad thing. God made it very clear to me that He did not intend to send us across the world and bring back the same people. I knew the hard stuff was coming, and I was right.
There were days in Ukraine after Jake left that felt like my 40 days in the desert. I spent a lot of time fighting God. I spent a lot of time questioning why He left me in this tiny village alone and why He would separate a family and hurt two children for the sake of another. I would lay in the bed in the apartment and just talk to God. Talk talk talk talk talk and then nothing. His silence was absolutely deafening and maddening and heart breaking. One morning I woke up to another day of rain, facing another day at the orphanage with workers that didn't like me and didn't want our adoption to happen that were filling our sons head with who knows what and my clothes that had dried on the line outside by the chicken coup smelled like sewage and I broke. I stood there completely naked with clothes in my clenched fists shaking them at God and yelling at Him "why did You do this to us? Why are You SO quiet? I'm here aren't I? Isn't this what You told me to do? You told me to go and here I am being obedient and nothing from You! What do You want from me?" And in my screaming, He whispered back. "THIS is not what I asked of you. I don't want anything from you. I want you." I spent that day silent. As conviction washed over me I became painfully aware of the sin in my misery and grand expectation. It occurred to me that Gods purpose in isolating me was to draw me closer to Him.....not to push me away. A sweet friend of mine and prayer warrior for our family said to me "McKenzee. Its time for you to cut out all the noise and just BE STILL." I sat in the middle of the bed and closed my eyes and turned on praise and worship music. "The more I seek You. The more I find You. The more I find You. The more I love You. I want to sit at Your feet, drink from the cup in Your hands, lay back against You and breathe, feel Your heartbeat. This love is so deep, its more than I can stand. I melt in Your peace, its overwhelming." And there He was. Just sitting with me. Being quiet. And in the following days, as things got harder, and the loneliness got deeper, He began speaking to me and revealing all of the things He was working on inside of me. The more I began to seek His face, the more I found Him. And the more He began preparing my heart for this long road ahead......
At some point in our marriage, Jake became my only lean-to. He became my safe haven and my voice of reason......my first safe haven and my first voice of reason. And the very first thing that God revealed to me in that apartment in Ukraine was that His desire for our marriage is for God to be a resting place for each of us FIRST, with one another as the earthly supplement. Jake cannot possibly complete me, when he, himself, is incomplete. The only acceptable codependency, is codependency on God. BURN.
Next, God began showing me the ways that He had so perfectly taken care of me in Jakes absence. I was staying in an apartment, attached to a house, owned and lived in by the nurse and the groundskeeper at the orphanage. They fed me fresh fruit and vegetables directly from their garden. When the orphanage director said she wanted to appeal our adoption because we didn't believe we love David, these people, strangers, went to bat for us. When my loneliness was overwhelming, there would be a knock on the door and little 2 year old Bogy would march in with her pigtails and pacifier and plop herself down in my lap and hug me. When they caught me one day with tears in my eyes, they prayed for me. They prayed for me. God put me in an apartment with people that love Him, that cared for me just as they would have cared for their own family member. His love is global. And every morning when they woke me up with coffee, I was reminded of that.
We did the paper chase and God showed off HUGE in every goverment office we entered. He was proving to me that He had not left me, I simply had to seek His presence. And then our orphanage visits were over and Gotcha Day came and went and we hopped a train to Kiev........and the refiners fire got hot hot hot. Kiev was cold and rainy. Cold as in, too cold and wet for a little boy that NEEDS to stay healthy kinda cold. So we stayed in the apartment. A lot. And the transition began.
I need to say this before I get into the transition.....we could have had another baby if we wanted to just expand our family. We did not at all feel like that's what God was requiring of us. Yes, of course, there is emotion and yes, David is our son and no, we wouldn't change any of this, but for our family, adoption is an act of obedience. There are no rainbows or flowers or fluffy kitty cats in obedience. Its HARD. For families that keep it real and don't glamourize or romanticize adoption, thank you!
By the time we got to Kiev and our transition phase started, I was spiritually empty. I was maintaining all I could maintain with praise and worship and prayer alone. It felt like every day was a new battle. I was being shaped and molded spiritually while trying to be patient and handle a very scared and stubborn little boy....while hurdling a language barrier. He would have a meltdown that would last hours and when it was over, I would go take a hot shower and have a meltdown of my own. We had been there 6 days when I finally said enough is enough. Sunday morning came and we had no idea how long we were going to be in Kiev. David was bored and tired of looking at me and tired of looking at our apartment and I prayed "God. Give me the courage to go to church today." I picked up the phone and called our translator and asked her to call us a cab. She tried to talk me out of it. She tried to tell me that the church I wanted to go to wasn't a REAL church.......I told her to call the cab. I prayed the whole way there.....Father, here I am. I have absolutely nothing left. Sustain me. We walked into Hillsong Church Kiev and the tears started running down my face. Worship was full of hand raisers and aisle dancers and "Amen"ers. I felt FULL. Before we left, the church provided translator laid hands on us and prayed for us. I cried again. Just to be among believers......I felt at home. We walked out of there so peaceful. I didn't know when we were leaving Ukraine, but I knew God would carry me through that time. And when I looked to my left, at those big brown eyes staring up at me, the parallels began to hit me. David didn't know this peace or fullness. He fought me just as hard as I fight God. His tantrums are no different than mine. He fights me over bedtime and baths.....I fight God over pride and selfishness. The difference is this..........Gods PERFECT love for me, casts out my fear of being abandoned. David doesn't know Gods love, so he looks to me to cast out that fear......and my love has been far from perfect. I began to realize that God parents every one of us as His hurt children. He binds up our wounds and heals our brokenness to prepare our hearts to do His work. He doesn't parent us as healthy children and then get frustrated when our brokenness shows through.
And that's where we are today. We are working our hardest to emulate that perfect, fear casting out love. And we fail. A lot. A whole lot. We knew that this would be hard. We knew that there would be a ton of adjusting to do for every member of our family. We didn't know that God would break us down to our knees in humility. We didn't know that God would redefine "love" for us. We do know that God is working. In the midst of words like scabies, poop accidents, speech therapy and tantrums.....God has purpose. He doesn't waste anything. He teaches us to find the rainbows in little things like after being home for almost two weeks, the fear of bedtime has subsided enough for David to say "good night mommy. i duv you too!". He teaches us to look forward to dying to ourselves.....because that means we can finally live for Him.
We have been quiet. We haven't been on FB much. The TV has gotten lots of rest. We haven't answered tons of phone calls (sorry about that). There are a lot of opinions and lots of noise that happens when families struggle. And if we learned anything AT ALL in Ukraine, its that the ONLY noise we need to hear, the only advice we need to seek, the only voice we need to rise to, the only book we need about adoption, is breathed by God.
