Getting Over Ourselves, Part 1

On Saturday I went to a picnic for adoptive families. One of the moms asked me how long it had taken us to bring Avivah home, and I told her we’d waited almost exactly two years. Her response? “Wow, that was quick, then!”

My initial instinct was, of course, to contradict her with, “No, actually it was the longest two years of my life, and I have the gray hairs and ulcer to prove it.” I refrained, because in her arms she cradled her beautiful baby girl who’d come home from China six weeks earlier. A child for whom she’d waited five years.

She wins, right? Surely her wait was harder because it was far longer than my own. And surely my adoption experience with Avivah—with all its lies, betrayals, confrontation, and drama—was harder than another mother’s two-year process that went smoothly and as expected from beginning to end (if such a thing exists).

Maybe I’ve been watching too many episodes of Numbers on Netflix, but I can’t help wondering if Charlie Eppes could come up with an algorithm for classifying the degree of hardship suffered in each person’s adoption experience. He could factor in waiting times, paperwork snafus, dashed expectations, personality types, travel issues, financial burdens, physical health, marital conflict, and spiritual maturity to come up with highly accurate ratings of our individual angst. Wouldn’t that be great? Being able to point to a definitive number would really save us time. I mean, if I’m a 27 and you’re a 34 on the Adoption Misery Scale, enough said, right? You win. Why even bother telling each other our stories?

I hope you’re picking up on the sarcasm by now. And I hope you know that the point I’m trying to make is an admonition to myself more than anyone else. In this matter I am the worst of sinners, though I know I’m not alone. It seems we’ve created a culture of comparison. I recognize it running rampant in the adoption community, and I despise what it does to our relationships. I have a friend whose heart is breaking a little more every day as she waits for a slow-moving government to process the final paperwork so she can bring home her little girl. Her pain is real and crushing, but she apologizes for it because her experience has been so “short and smooth” compared to mine.

I have other friends who nearly lost their referred children to illness before they ever had a chance to meet them. Another who received a referral and fell in long-distance love with her son only to learn that he had died suddenly of sickness that probably could have been defeated with a common antibiotic and adequate nutrition. And I know of some who sailed through the paperwork and waiting only to discover that being home with their children feels more like a nightmare than a dream come true. Then there’s me, still worn out from the labor of waiting, still processing three traumatic weeks in Africa, and still struggling to make sense of a little thing called post-adoption depression.

In the past 79 days since my last blog post, I’ve spent most of my time waffling between three unpleasant emotional states: feeling sorry for myself, angry at myself, or ashamed of myself. Occasionally I’m capable of achieving all three at once, and it was last week during one of those unfortunate meltdowns that my husband suggested I go away for a few days. Alone. Just me and Jesus.

Those plans are in the works, but in the meantime I’ve had to settle for an afternoon at Panera and a few really long showers. And after all the crying, complaining, repenting, praying, journaling, and thinking, this is what I’ve realized:

It’s time to get over myself.

In typical American fashion we’re forgetting that life isn’t about us. Adoption isn’t the be-all, end-all of significant life choices. It’s a thing we do, not who we are. Is it hard? Absolutely. Life is hard. But no matter how hard it is, the degree of difficulty doesn’t matter. It’s completely irrelevant.

We’re missing the bottom line. God didn’t breathe life into us so we could rescue a child, advocate for a worthy cause, or perform some great act of sacrifice or service. His beautiful, complicated, perfect architecture of our lives has one supreme objective: Glory. His, not ours. Whatever else we do, if we’re not pointing to and applauding who He is—His power, grace, faithfulness, mercy, and holiness—we’re wasting our time, because God isn’t glorfied by circumstances or external results, but by the internal posture of our hearts.

Suffering algorithms. Degrees of difficulty. Failure, pain, and death. That’s one side of the coin. The other is prettier, dressed with victory, healing, success, and dreams come true. But like all coins, regardless of how different each side appears, they both have the same value: the opportunity to bring glory to God every moment of every day.

So. How do we do that? When it’s 4:30 p.m. and the kids are breaking their toys (or each other) and the dog is underfoot while you try to throw together a passably healthy meal from the sparse contents of a refrigerator you no longer have the time or energy to restock, and you’re wondering what your life is about and how getting a steam burn from broccoli al dente can possibly have any kind of eternal significance, where’s the glory?

I’ll give you a hint: I haven’t figured it out yet. But I have some thoughts, which I’ll share soon in Part 2. For now, I have veggies to steam and a grocery list to write.

Stay tuned…