The Waiting Room (Lost Days)

I am home.  It's been strange. 

People will walk up and congratulate me and ask where the kids are. 
They aren't here.  I left them in Ethiopia without a choice or a say in the matter.  They are now our legal children, Moses Paul Roepnack and Miriam Paul Roepnack, but we must wait for a US Embassy appointment in a few months to fly out and pick them up.

In the meantime, we got a few new pics from some wonderful traveling parents.  Buried within one of the albums, we found a video of our girl, taking her first unassisted steps.  As soon as it cued up, I began cheering her on... yelling into the computer, clapping, screaming...

"GOOD GIRL!!!  Mama's so proud! 

Good girl, Miriam...!!!"

....And the video cuts out. 

Silence.

Not long after, Paul took the girls upstairs, and I began my nightly chores.

Suddenly, my knees buckled, I hit the floor, and I had my first BIG cry.  The open-mouthed, punched in the stomach, heart in your throat, can't even breath, big ugly cry. 


I thought of my how she can't hear me cheering for her.

I thought of the day I walked away and left them behind.

I thought of all these lost days.

I thought of the picture I recieved a week after I got home, of my sweet girl sitting alone on a concrete floor in a Bumbo chair (she hates sitting in Bumbo chairs) and still wearing the pajamas I brought for our slumber parties, and my insides scream for Mercy. 

I thought of my son, and his brand new growing "fro",

 and how I long to run my fingers through his hair and rock my strong little man to sleep. 

   I thought of Laura. 

We were supposed to be walking this path together.

Suddenly

PEACE.

God doesn't leave mothers alone on the floor.  

When Jesus was struggling for breath on the cross, he was arranging for his own mother's care.  It was one of the last things he did before he died under the weight of our sins.  He gave Mary to John, the "disciple that he loved".  And she lived with John from that day forward.

I am living in that place.  I am in John's house.

I know people want to know what it's like to be in this limbo... 

...To be in the waiting room.

They ask all the time;  prospective adoptive parents, adoption blog-stalkers, ambulance chasers....And in the questions, I can feel them weighing it out against their own abilities... 

They know adoption is hard...but HOW HARD is it? 

They are thinking the same thing I was when I would ask about timelines, travel, finances...they are wondering if they can handle it, or if they even want to. 

For all of you who want to know: 

You CAN'T handle it. 

It's too hard.

God handles it. 

And He makes it easy.

He gives you the kind of faith you need to leave your two babies behind in an orphanage and fly home without them, even though after only 11 days, you love those children as much as you love the children you labored and bled for.  It's unthinkable.

He creates even more joy in your life than you ever thought possible.  You get to watch Him create beauty from ashes within your own soul without any help from you. 

God gives an incredible gift to adoptive parents:

He gives you a broken heart, put together in a new way. 
More like His.  You get to undergo Heavenly heart surgery at the Hands of the Master Craftsman.

And when that heart breaks all over again, and you find yourself lying on the floor with a dishrag in your hand, He fixes it.  He makes it better. 

He gives you your lost days BACK.

  

Thank you for our Boy.

The Hope of Christ moves your hand back and forth across the counter, wiping crumbs, and setting you back into your mother-motions.

He guides my eyes up to the picture of my children's Nannies that I hung over my sink only moments before...

And He tells me that He's got it covered.

He tells me that nothing is lost in Him. 

He tells me that He will give me back all of these "lost days" with my children 100 times over in His name. 

Because there are no such thing as lost days within Christ. 

All those days. 

All 32 years before I surrendered to Him. 

Not one of them wasted. 

All of them put to good use for His purposes.

He promises restoration. 

And I believe.

I walk upstairs with sippy cups in hand, to love the daughters that wait for me.  I take a quick peek at a decorated and empty nursery, and I thank God almighty for His perfect timing. 

It is well...with my soul...

I would not trade this wait for anything. 

For Laura, 

I love you. 

No lost days, no lost anything.