When I talked about my day with Jay when he came home from work, I explained what I’d been doing, what I’d learned and how there were indeed options for us for continuing our adoption. He looked at me and my excitement to move forward but it didn’t seem like he was really listening. At one point, he just walked into the living room, leaving me in mid thought, mid sentence in the kitchen preparing taco salads for dinner. I know he’s apprehensive. He told me as much at 11pm that night, long after the kids had gone to bed, the house picked up, the school lunch made and the dogs let outside to do their business.
He read to me from James 1.
You know the one. It starts with James greeting the 12 tribes and goes onto the “consider it pure joy when you face trials,” verse. Um, yeah, we’re there. A trial. The biggest we’ve had in 5 years. Joy? I don’t think so. Next, “the testing of your faith develops perseverance.” Yeah, we get that. We know that God is up to something here. We know the verses. It’s not new to us at all. It’s in our heads. But it’s not in Jay’s heart. Not right now.
He read the rest of James aloud to me and it was all relevant and good stuff. But skip ahead to the end of James 1 because it shocked us. James ends by telling us, “to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” We had read this chapter before but had forgotten the ending. Jay went to it for the beginning verses about trials and troubles. It ended with serving orphans! I couldn’t believe my ears!
You would have thought that those verses would have put my husband right back on track on the road to our daughter. It was a crystal clear direction for me, but those words didn’t work for Jay. He’s still apprehensive, still questioning, still scared, still hurt. It surprises me because early on in our adoption process we had a conversation about the what-ifs of international adoption. He expressed his confidence that even if we lost it all and never succeeded to bring a daughter home, we still gave it all to God for His purpose and it would be worth it. And now he can’t even hear those very words that originally came from his mouth. He’s lost.
During our shopping trip for kitchen chairs today, there was construction on 27th Street that made us take a detour. I don’t know this edge of town well, but it’s impossible to get lost in Lincoln, I’m not directionally challenged and I just followed the orange detour signs that turned me west and then eventually back north. But I never saw a sign directing me back east to get back onto 27th Street. I ended up driving through the university campus and found myself at a dead end under an overpass, in front of Memorial Stadium where the Huskers play. I got so mad at the city of Lincoln for not posting better detour signs. I could have used the GPS to get me to a better cross street, but Lincoln is easy to navigate. I double backed, cut over east on Y Street and made it back to 27th Street and headed north to the furniture stores and Toys R Us. I always knew where I was but didn’t know the best way to get where I needed to go. But I made it with little trouble.
Where is Jay on this adoption journey? Jay is lost. He’s still driving around. He can’t see the orange and black detour signs. His Magellan has old maps and is stuck on a frozen blue screen anyway, rendering it useless. The paper map has been stained by coffee and sodas and it’s crumpled and torn from being shoved in between the passenger seat and the center console of our Ford Escape. He might be parked on the side of the road or stuck in that dead end under the overpass next to the stadium, trying to figure out where he’s supposed to go. He’ll figure it out. I’m confident our God will show him the way to our daughter.
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