Postponed Dreams and Continued Faith In God's Plan

I’ve been pondering for awhile about how goals and dreams play into the life of a Christian.  I’m confident that you can have a secure identity in Christ, have your hope set fully on Him, while simultaneously strive to achieve worthy goals and dreams.  The key is being able to maintain a firm grasp on the gospel and remember the bigger picture when you discover you may not be able to achieve your goals and dreams.  How you respond when faced with unmet expectations reveals a lot about if your goals and dreams have become idols within your heart. 

At the end of December I began reflecting on the past 12 months and, despite all of our blessings and reasons to rejoice, I was a little saddened when I thought about all the things we had planned on accomplishing...but didn’t.  Last January, Josh and I had made the decision to move forward in both the adoption process and in church planting process.

I’ve obviously written quite a bit about the adoption, but on this particular blog I have not shared a lot about our desire to church plant.  We have had the desire to be in full time ministry for many years.  Throughout this past year we had wonderful discussions between ourselves, people interested in possibly church planting with us, and with some of our pastors.  Josh was able to begin some initial brainstorming and planning but nothing was ever actually put in to motion.  

One reason we didn’t move forward was because we have been very divided in how we spent our money.  Ideally, we would like to church plant with no other debt other than a mortgage payment.  Although we’ve been faithfully making payments we have quite a bit of school loans left to pay off.  Even though we had debt we went ahead and started the adoption process because of the counsel we were given from several families.  They said, "If you know this is what you are called to, just step out in faith, and God will provide."  They were right, God does provide!  However, what we failed to remember is that He doesn't always provide in the same way for all people, nor does He always provide in the timeframe we expect.  Some of the individuals who were giving us counsel to move forward raised significant amounts of money in really short periods of time.  I am thankful the Lord provided for them in that way, but He did not choose to make our fundraising efforts come as easily or as quickly.  Instead, God taught us a lot about himself and trusting that His ways are better than our ways.   As we officially began our adoption journey we recognized that we were going to need to raise most of the money.  Also, because of timing constraints with paperwork and fees, we wanted to raise enough to get us through the home study before investing in any of the initial application fees to our agency. We recognized that to complete the adoption in the time frame we wanted we had to put every spare penny into our adoption account and make minimum payments on our other loans until after the adoption was complete.  I spent nine months doing five very time consuming fundraisers and in September I started babysitting approximately 35 hours a week to earn extra cash.  To this day we still have only raised $7,000 towards our adoption.  This is both exciting and discouraging.  Exciting because we finally have enough for the initial agency fees and the home study.  Discouraging because we still have to come up with a LOT more money to complete the adoption.  And on that note, we had some dear friends contact us the first week of January who have a desire to give financially towards our adoption on a regular basis.  Their generosity has greatly encouraged our hearts.

In addition to finances, many of our other resources were divided.   As I was evaluating 2013, I began to realize that anytime Josh and I had spent time together we had always focused on either adoption or church planting.  Evening conversations and dates typically were about one of the two.  We also spent a lot of time this year going out of the house to work on research or filling out paperwork while the other parent cared for the kids. This obviously meant we spent less time together as an entire family.

Then came the miscarriage…

Prior to getting pregnant in the fall, I did not have a burning desire to have another biological child.  In fact, I thought we might be done for two reasons.  First, I didn't think we could get pregnant again without fertility treatments. Second, we had always wanted to adopt and wanted to do it so our kids could be close in age.  So, when we got pregnant last fall it was a HUGE surprise and instantly the Lord softened our hearts and we were thrilled to grow our family through another biological child.  We had decided to postpone the adoption for a short season.  However, when we lost the baby because of the miscarriage I was so sad.  Obviously.  Since then, I haven't been able to shake the feeling that God was using that little one to change my heart.  Ever since, I've have had this new longing, a deep desire to have another biological child.  This is really confusing, as you can imagine.  We have been processing this for the past three months.  At first I just thought it was a stage of grief and I would desire a biological baby less as time passed.  But, as each day passes, that desire has deepened, not faded. 

All this to say, since the first week of January we have been praying about postponing the adoption for a few years.  To even type these words out makes me so sad.  I know it's not the same as a miscarriage, but by postponing the adoption, I feel like I'm losing another child who I've been envisioning over the 9 months.

In the meantime we can pay off debt, pursue church planting or other avenues of full time ministry, and possibly try to have another biological baby.

So, for those of you who pray, please pray for us. I’m tempted to believe that others will judge us for postponing the adoption, for desiring another biological child, for having debt, or that those who have contributed to our adoption will question us about the money we have raised.  The money is currently in a private savings account.  We do plan on keeping the money in this account so it will be drawing interest and unable to be used for anything other than adoption.  We are also still accepting donations that will go directly into that savings account and not to be used for any other purpose.  In the future, when the time is right for our family, our hope is that we can start the adoption process much more quickly.  In addition, we recognize that others who are adopting are also in need of financial support.  We plan to give a portion to some other families who are currently in the adoption process.  We completely understand that this money was given to us by God through the generosity of others and so we want to be wise with it and steward it well by both sharing and saving.

So, this is where we are as a family.  We are realizing that many of our goals and dreams are not attainable in the time frame we had hoped and now we are trusting that the Lord’s plan for our life is better than what we can imagine for ourselves.  I heard a pastor say one time that God usually answers prayers in one of three ways, “Yes,”  “No,” or “Not Right Now.”  I KNOW that we will be adopting someday, but we are pretty certain that the Lord is telling us “Not Right Now.”

Although this is not what we had planned we still trust that His plan better than our own.   I am encouraged that even with the postponement of some of our dreams and goals, our faith and hope are still secure in Christ.  I’m confident that this is an evidence of God’s grace in our lives.  I’m thankful that despite this detour we can still be content in where God has us while actively making steps in faith.  Please continue praying for us and for our journey!