Heart-sick

Do you remember a time when you couldn't pinpoint a feeling you were having until someone else named it? As a mom, I can assure you it happened a lot, at least when you were young (teaching Ezra feeling words is quite the challenge, as everything comes out angry, and we have to dig to find the real feelings).

I couldn't name how I was feeling about our adoption until I saw the word on a friend's blog, totally unrelated to my situation, but so poignant: despair. I don't want to talk about, even think about our adoption, because I am despairing of it ever actually happening.

I have lost hope.

Whew, that is a bitter sentence to speak, and the tears I cry just reading it are bitter. But even that is better than no tears, for me at least. My heart is so sick within me that I haven't been able to cry the tears that would flow from a tender place.

In an honest moment like this one, I can admit I don't believe we will adopt. It feels impossible. It would take too many good things happening in an area of my life where I have experienced nothing but disappointment and loss. Courts have become hostile, referrals have ceased, and we lost the opportunity to adopt a precious little girl because of her government, after we'd already begun to try and bring her home. We were told we'd receive a referral of an orphan (waiting for her family) in July that has still not been received. It has been three years since we decided to adopt.

The only hope I have is in the Lord, and he's been so quiet, so quiet, for so long in this area. Still, he has not said to stop, and I know he'd have enough mercy on us to tell me when to actually give up. Sometimes I guess you have to trust that he is who he says he is, even when he's not overtly showing you. I do believe (a tiny bit) that I will see his goodness in this plan someday. I just don't know how.