Yesterday, I was on the edge of despair. We talked with our lawyer and found another thing told to us had in fact not been granted…said to be impossible. I sat down after that phone call and doubt began to grip my mind and heart. The raging waters of this journey of adoption were overtaking me.

Friends on this journey with us gave encouragement and others spoke truth into my despair. But my battle was fierce. It seemed that “having faith seemed like a denial of reality….” I looked at everything from the last 2 years from my senses and said, “I want to quit!! A quitter I will be, I don’t care!” I wished for the pain to go away, the waiting to cease and all lost to be returned. Foolish. I sat foolish on the bank of my waters, cursing all that has become, not seeing the true realities.

Then a friend posted a video of a spoken word and I melted, as quick as sand melts when waters crash over it. It was called “strike the waters” and it spoke directly to my heart.

You see, this journey of adoption has had its seasons, but amidst them are moments when I am tempted to despair. Yesterday, I wrote this in my journal:

I have fought for faith today. My feet are at the edge of these waters I have been swimming in for 2 years…I got out of this water today and was ready to retreat…to sit down on the beach away from it’s depths and call it’s win…and accept my loss. I was content to go back to the sand where I once built my castles. But I found that all my castles had been knocked down. I turned in my heart towards those raging waters who have tossed me for two years now and all I had was anger. I screamed out, “Let me be, you adoption journey!! Let me be!!” I sat in doubt and admitted the cries of my heart. This journey in these waters have been a place of slow death. I look up from the shore and see the waters roaring up and down and curse it with my might. I hate you! How dare you come and disturb my castles of pleasure and break through my walls, shattering all of my dreams. You take down all my creations like they are nothing.

My parenting skills, my plan of education, my belief that all things will be properly put in its place if you just work hard and do right. You take them down with a mighty blow. How dare you crash down my savings and make me ask for help as though I could not take care of myself! You knock down my schedules of time and seasons and expose my inabilities to manage this life!

You take my priorities of safety and security and snap it in my face. You erode the face of my towers and proclaim my failures and lack of control!

You take my naivety of rebuilding and continue to wash away all of my pride telling me to “pray to my god” Injustice you are!! And today in my despair I hate you! I hate you because of what you do. You rage upon me and seek to call my bluff. You call me out to your waters and seek to drown me in your depths. Maybe you are true and too strong for me. I walk away from your waters that give me daily, my salty tears!

I sit here on the shore running the sand grains between my fingers asking why…why so much destruction to myself…wasn’t I fine before building my sand castles on this shore?

And then God..He rescued me, as He has done every time.

who enclosed the sea with doors
When, bursting forth, it went out from the womb;
When I made a cloud its garment
And thick darkness its swaddling band,
And I placed boundaries on it
And set a bolt and doors,
And I said,