This Reminds Me

Archive for April 14th, 2008

A few weeks ago, Julia and a neighbor girl were playing ball inside and managed to break a glass.  I’d told them to play outside – I specifically told them to take that ball outside – I’d told Julia to place her glass in the sink.  I knew that if they kept bouncing that ball inside, it wasn’t going to end well.  And it didn’t.  I rushed downstairs to face two sheepish little girls toeing the glass shards, each accusing the other of the offense.

(sigh)   I knew what would happen.  And I began to deal with the broken glass, hoping they might learn to listen, and thankful neither was hurt.

We’re coming up on our second “Sisters Day,” celebrating the day Julia came home.  We are incredibly blessed to have her as a daughter and sister.  At this time of year, my mind always wanders back to St. Pete and Children’s Home #47 remembering how nervous, excited, scared and thrilled we were to finally call her “ours,” recognizing the long attachment journey had just begun.

Many times on adoption boards, or in conversation, or on other blogs or whatever, adoptive parents will totally gloss over the challenges of attachment by saying, “Oh, little X was meant to be part of our family.  God had this planned all along.”  And everyone nods and smiles.  Except for me.  Because more and more often lately, I cringe at attributing adoption to God’s perfect will.

I don’t think God engineers births to satifsy the needs of adoptive parents.  I don’t think God looks down from heaven and says, “Oh, yeah – the Smiths – they really want a baby.  Let me make sure Maria over here supplies an infant for them.”  Or, “Little orphan Ivan – I’m going to banish his tiny, shivering body to the icy sewers of Moscow for a few years, preparing him for the Williams.”

No.  No. I do not believe the need for adoption is part of God’s will.  Neither do I believe that limbless or blind children are part of God’s will.  Or that cancer or AIDS is God’s will.  Or that lives snuffed out in car crashes are God’s will.  Or that young girls brualized by nuts in a religious compound is God’s will.

When I read Genesis – before the fall of man - I see a perfect place.  Family is together in communion with God.  When I read Revelation – after Christ returns – I see a perfect place.  “No tears” and constant worship, we’re promised.

But here we are.  Stuck in the middle.  And as a race, we’re not really good at obeying our Father, any more than Julia and our neighbor girl are always good at obeying me.

I think God knows what’s going to happen before it happens – but I don’t believe He causes everything to happen.  I don’t think He gives cancer to toddlers or crashes vanloads of families.  I thnk those things happen because we live in an imperfect world that Satan walks – for now.  We have the free will to decide how we’re going to act and react with the circumstances we’re dealt.  And when we make poor or immoral choices – they have consequences.  Sometimes those consequences breathe.  And cry.  And long for the comfort of a parent.

Those consequences are like the shattered pieces of Julia’s glass, broken by errant children who chose not to obey.  The shards are no less real because we created them instead of God.  They explode, arcing in a wide, dangerous swath, their overlooked remnants bouncing, lying in wait to cut again and again.

Surveying the broken pieces –  God’s perfect wisdom can be evidenced, if we ask for it.  Laying it on parents’ hearts that their families aren’t complete.   Matching empty, aching arms to squirmy little bodies.  Giving workers the energy, intelligence and determination needed to overcome the myriad of adoption barriers each family faces.  Nudging others to offer finanical help, or words of encouragement.  Creating a family not born of flesh, but forged with the fire necessary to craft those broken pieces into a work of art, and a work in progress.

When I have been at my most low – when I have been broken – I have learned the most about He who created me – what I was supposed to do – whom I really was and am and could be.  That learning has been painful at best and near debilitating at worst, with flashes of insight sparkling like broken glass along the empty corridors of long, dark nights.

I have learned - I know – I am Julia’s mother.  Not because it was ever in God’s most perfect plan for me to be so.  But because Jehovah - the one Sovereign Diety of what was and is and will be – is also the God of broken pieces.