This season of waiting has been hard. If you've talked to me in the last three weeks, it seems the waiting has intensified as we are waiting for some paperwork and for a file to come through from South Africa. Each day I wake up with hope for the day. And each day, for the last three weeks, I've given up hope somewhere around 10:30 am because the work day is officially over in South Africa.
When you are waiting for an adoption to move forward, you have such hope. You hope for the timeline to be quick (you don't want to wait for 10 years), you hope for the child to be loved where they're at right now, you hope they will be protected from evil people who prey on helpless children, you hope that when you meet them for the first time they don't hate you. You hope and you hope and you hope. These past few weeks have been filled with such hope; it's almost overwhelming at times. As we've been waiting and hoping, I've found such encouragement and joy in Scripture.
Over and over again in the Psalms, we are called to hope in the Lord.
“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.
O Israel, hope in the Lord!
For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
and with him is plentiful redemption.
And he will redeem Israel
from all his iniquities.”
“O Israel, hope in the Lord
from this time forth and forevermore.”
“Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord his God,
who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them,
who keeps faith forever;
who executes justice for the oppressed,
who gives food to the hungry.”
As I looked at my watch this afternoon and saw that it is bedtime for our child in South Africa and realized we will be waiting until Monday (at least), I realized that God is not wasting this time. This huge idea of waiting on the Lord and having hope in the Lord is finally settling into my soul. I am starting to understand more fully what it means (in my own small way) to hope in the Lord. God has allowed me to translate this season of waiting into a deeper understanding of hoping in Him and I am so thankful.
I am realizing more as I write this out that my hope in the adoption, for a child, is not a bad thing, but it could and probably will disappoint. My hope in God will never disappoint. God will never disappoint.