Waiting

The last few weeks have had their highs and lows. It seems that the closer we get to our reunion with Sophia, the more our frustration increases. The days drag by so slowly, yet even as I type everything seems to move so quickly. It feels as if a single hour lasts a day, but before I know it another week is gone. We are caught in kind of timelessness, where today and tomorrow and yesterday are all relative. Time passes, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but we are are always pulled along.

The silence is the worst part for me. There is always a sense of "not knowing" that eats at me. While we were waiting for Sophia to get out of PGN, I was a nervous wreck. Then came the waiting for the birth certificate. And then it was the passport. And then it was the 2nd DNA. Now it is our appointment that is lingering in some nebulous limbo. It rests somewhere out there beyond us. And the long slow tick of the clock makes me want to scream. I just want to know when.

Please, don't miss understand me. I do not doubt the goodness of God. I am not questioning his wisdom. I am fully confident that he is in total control. But anxiety and mistrust are not so easily crucified. The will is not so easily slain. Our desires for control and comfort are forever battling against the knowledge of God. The liar comes and whispers, "Surely if he loved you, he would make this all go faster," or "I wouldn't make my children wait for their desires" or some other nonsense. It may be true that the deceiver gives his children whatever they want and quickly, but it is always to their harm.

Our Father cares for us. He knows us. This wait is not meant to harm me (or Delia), but it is meant to make us more dependent upon him. He knows that there will be a time when we will be tempted to make an idol out of our daughter. He knows that we will be tempted to teach her to love us more than him. We pray that we will not surrender to such temptations. We pray that the Lord will enable us to teach her to know him, to love him, and to depend upon him above all others. I know that as long as I walk this earth there will exist a sense of not knowing, but by the grace of God some day I will learn how to completely lean on him and find confidence in the reality that I am known. I also realize that in learning to submit to God's will, I will one day be able to model that behavior for my children. And I will know from experience, when we are teaching them to be patient and to delay gratification, that the wait will not harm them. It may make them cry, it may make them pout, it may even make them angry, but it will not harm them.