God... And

(in my arms August 25, 2008)

August 14, it will have been a year ago when we got the AWESOME email approval from CIS that we could travel, finally, to Daniel. For months, I had been getting up all through the night to check my email for the millionth, trillionth, gabillionth time. I had spent literally every waking moment composing letters, making phone calls, devising plans to convince my government that his life was worth examining so he could have a HOME and ASAP. On this night, I had been crying. Not just the regular sad, sorry, mad cry. Mine was the balled up in a little corner of my sofa just empty and sinking, sinking crying. I did not check my email just before falling asleep. I prayed. I said to God that I could not foresee the culmination of this process. I felt, I told God, that I would not be able to find a way to live with the guilt and loss and tragedy of having Daniel grow up in an orphanage, but, I told God, I could not see a way to help him anymore. I was starting to believe that we would never get an approval. God, I said in my mind, I cannot see how I will live through this, and I honestly cannot go on this way. I am broken. Please help me; please help my baby. I don't remember stopping crying before I fell asleep.

God was silent, but I did not wake up that night in my zombie search for answers that never never seemed to come.

My husband, not a person to wake at night to check for the magic email, got it before I woke, and he came running into our bedroom with our laptop. I had to rub the sleep out of my red eyes to read it twice because I was so soundly asleep that I thought I was dreaming at first.

I have been broken before:

1) My dad had heart surgery. I had no job, no plans, no home, and I thought I might be losing my dad. I was terrified. I curled up in my sinking, crying ball and said to God, "I don't have any way to control any of this. I am broken; please help me."

Within a week, I was engaged to my husband, who I had loved for all my life, I guess. I had gotten a job where he lived, and my dad got a little better.

2) After miscarriages and infertility, we finally got the test that determined our issue. We were told that we would probably not ever have biological children. Same broken plea.

And then I found out, about a week later, that I was already pregnant with Scott.

Heartfelt prayers do not always bring the answers I want them to bring. Can prayers cure infertility or solve government problems or bring health and prosperity unless that is what God wants or wanted before the prayer was prayed? I don't think so. Maybe God has a way of breaking us competely so we can accept gifts, when they come, as his gifts. I honestly don't know how all that works, and I have witnessed really horrible things happen to people no matter how much they pray or not. I also don't think that God blesses people with answered prayers because they are good and faithful. His answers seem more complicated. All I know is that I feel compelled to pray, lots.

Those three moments in time stand for me as possibly the most defining ones of my adult life. In my gigantic broken moments, God seems to be telling me to trust him. Give up, you, he says. You can't control this. Why do you spend so much of what has been given to you trying to be in control? Why can't you just trust me?

I have been hesitant to talk about my relationship with God here. Some people who check in are not religious at all or are devout Christians or devout other religions, and both kinds of people might read this post with judgement. However, I cannot remember that night without recalling how that prayer sent me sadly to sleep, but to really sleep for the first time in seven months (and actually for the last time since then...hence Daniel's sleep issues ensued). The peace was strange. The next morning, like the days following my dad's illness and my infertility diagnosis, felt a little like my own private miracle. I wonder why I can't just trust God for everything, whether I feel broken or not, and I guess that is what has me thinking tonight.

And, thanks to those of you who had some good advice and support for my pediatrician situation. I picked up the form and talked to the receptionist who was almost in tears when she apologised. I felt like she understood the problem. She even said that one reason she was asking about it was because she wanted to adopt a child one day. Who knows. People can be really stupid, and I have also said stupid things in my life, many times. I chose option 2 (talk to her) and 3 (move on). I like our doctor. I'll see how things go at our next appointment before I decide to leave.