Meet My Friend Sara

As I have written before to you, I am so blessed, invigorated, and strengthened in my walk with the Lord when I hear personal testimonies of God's faithfulness under the weight of trial. I hope you will be equally ministered to as you read from a young couple that has waited patiently on the Lord to extend their table through adoption.

Our wait for children began about five years ago. We had been married a little over 3 years, and we were ready to begin building our family. Like any other young couple, we thought it would happen very easily (and quickly), but as the months progressed, and each test turned up negative, I began sensing that something had to be wrong.

Since we were only 26 at the time, our doctor recommended that we wait a year before getting any testing done. A year went by, and we decided to start the testing process to see what was preventing us from becoming pregnant. After a host of tests, we found out that we were both fine: perfectly healthy. There were no concerns, no red flags, and no hint that anything was wrong. We continued to wait, sure that eventually God was going to bless us with children; he was just calling us to wait and to trust him for the timing.

One year turned into two years, and two years quickly turned into three. It was during this time that we began seriously considering adoption. Honestly, I’m a little embarrassed that it took us that long. Adoption just wasn’t at the forefront of our minds; not because we didn’t see the merit in it, we just didn’t see anyone doing it. No one in our immediate families had adopted and there were only a few families in our church that had adopted children, and there wasn’t anyone that we knew well or personally that was going through the process. It was completely unfamiliar territory to us.

So, we began to pray and fast and read books and information on adoption, and it was over this time period of a few months that God began really confirming his call on us towards adoption. Adoption moved from a “second-best” option in our hearts to the very best option! We were excited and thankful that God had called us to this ministry, and we began to see the beauty in the fact that we too, had been adopted by God. This became a precious truth to us and helped to fuel our passion for adoption.

In November of 2009, we officially began the process to adopt from a foreign country. In some ways, we thought the hard part was over. What could be worse than years of unexplained infertility? At least now we knew there was going to be a child at the end of this process, and hopefully two, since we were praying for twins! Well, we were definitely wrong, and there were many more hard times in store for us.  

We thought our wait time for our adoption would be about a year, and it was easily double that. Our official wait-time was extended three times and there were changes that occurred in the country that also caused extensive delays. It would take too long to chronicle everything that happened during these months and years, but the overwhelming theme was discouragement and disappointment. From the time we sent our paperwork, it was over a year before we had any good news. Each time we were contacted by our adoption agency during that time period, it was to notify us of further delays.

But, God sustained our hope and our trust. He refined us and used this trial to drive us more deeply into the love of Christ that was shown for us on the cross. We began to see the importance of measuring God’s love for us based on the cross and not on our circumstances. By withholding something from us that was very good, he was giving us more of himself and showing us that he truly is sufficient to meet our greatest needs and to satisfy our hearts. We were learning in a very deep way what it means to find comfort and joy in the Lord, even when our hearts were breaking.   

I’m so thankful for my husband and the way he led our family during these tough years. He tenderly cared for and shepherded my heart and faithfully pointed me to Christ. He sent me an email during this time that I probably read close to a hundred times over the past several years. It is still as helpful to me today as the day he sent it to me, and it shows a lot of what God was teaching us during our wait.

•   Remember that to live is Christ. The life of satisfaction is a life of growing in the knowledge of God and being used by him to expand his kingdom and benefit his people and spread his Gospel. This is the life that is truly life. This is the life that brings real hope and a deep anticipation of the Glory and inheritance to come.

◦       “Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will not hunger, and whoever believes in me will not thirst” John 6:35 

•   Remember that every ounce of pain and disappointment that you feel is “grace cloaked in grief.” It is pure grace to your soul. God is winning your heart through your pain. “O Cross that liftest up my head, I dare not ask to fly from thee.” And why do we not ask to fly from our crosses? Because they lift our heads up to God.

◦       “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.  And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” (James 1:2-4)

◦       "More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." (Romans 5:3-5)

◦       "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28)

•   Trust that God’s way of ordering our life is perfect. What he brings into our lives is the best thing possible.

◦       In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will (Ephesians 1:11).

◦       God is in control and is working out every detail according to his will, "for he is in the heavens and does whatever he pleases" (Psalm 115:3). His plan for us is better than our own plan for us, so resign yourself to His will and rest in Him.

His plan truly is better for us than what our own plans would be, and it was just a matter of months before we would tangibly see that to be true.  

Almost two years exactly from when we applied for our adoption, we finally saw the faces of our children. After months and months of delays, the Lord blessed us with the most beautiful twin boys in all of the country (Yes, twins! And we didn’t even think it was possible that this prayer would be answered!). They are four months old, and Lord willing, we will bring them home this summer. Through all of those months of waiting and praying and wondering why it was taking so long, the Lord was preparing these sweet little boys for us. We had to wait that long because they just weren’t ready yet, and I guess in some ways, we weren’t ready yet either. The Lord was working on us and refining us; we are different people now than we were when this all started and I’m sure that we’ll forever be thankful for these precious, yet painful, waiting years.

And truthfully, our “waiting” isn’t over. We still have several months before we’ll have our boys home, but it’s more than that. In some ways, going through this trial has made me realize that “waiting” is just part of the Christian life. Until Christ returns, we are all going to be “waiting”… and most often, that waiting is going to be painful. It could be the agony we feel when we are waiting for healing of some physical ailment, or waiting for a job, or waiting for change to happen in us or in those we love. I’ve come to think that at least one of God’s purposes in this is to keep us from loving this world and from clinging too tightly to our lives here. Isn’t it true that heaven and the thought of no more tears and no more sorrow is most sweet to us when we are in the furnace of affliction?  And in some ways, waiting isn’t just part of the Christian life, it is the essence of it… we are people who wait. We wait for the return of our savior, Jesus Christ. We wait for the redemption of our bodies and for our heavenly home. We eagerly wait for the day when he takes his rightful throne and makes all things new.

The world looks at suffering and assumes that something must be wrong. We need to avoid pain and suffering at all cost! Even Christians can be tempted to think that suffering is a sign of God’s judgment and happiness and ease are a sign of his blessing. This principle, however, is not supported by scripture or by the experience of faithful Christians throughout the years. As John Piper shares in his book, Desiring God:  

I have never heard anyone say, "The really deep lessons of life have come through times of ease and comfort." But I have heard strong saints say, "Every significant advance I have ever made in grasping the depths of God's love and growing deep with him, has come through suffering."  Samuel Rutherford said that when he was cast into the cellars of affliction, he remembered that the great King always kept his wine there.  Charles Spurgeon said that those who dive in the sea of affliction bring up rare pearls. The pearl of greatest price is the glory of Christ.  Thus Paul stresses that in our sufferings the glory of Christ's all-sufficient grace is magnified.  If we rely on him in our calamity, and he sustains our "rejoicing in hope," then he is shown to be the all-satisfying God of grace and strength that he is.  

If we hold fast to him "when all around our soul gives way," then we show that he is more to be desired than all we have lost.  Christ said to the suffering apostle, "My grace is sufficient for you, for [my] power is perfected in weakness."  Paul responded to this: "Gladly, then, I will boast about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me.  Therefore I am content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).  So suffering clearly is designed by God not only as a way to wean Christians off of self and onto grace, but also as a way to spotlight that grace and make it shine.  That is precisely what faith does; it magnifies Christ's future grace.
The deep things of life in God are discovered in suffering.  So it was with Jesus himself.  "Although he was a Son, Jesus learned obedience through what he suffered" (Hebrews 5:8).  The same book where we read this also tells us Jesus never sinned (Hebrews 4:15).  So "learning obedience" does not mean switching from disobedience to obedience.  It means growing deeper and deeper with God in the experience of obedience.  It means experiencing depths of yieldedness to God that would not have been otherwise demanded. (Desiring God p. 265-266)

Greater depths of yieldedness to God; I love the thought of growing in my yieldedness to God, and truly, I’m thankful for anything that causes this to happen.