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He came home from a morning prayer meeting and said “I think we need to go now.”

My heart dropped into my stomach and it was as if I lost nine years’ work in nine seconds. Back again to newlywed – nearly heart-dead from crafting schemes to win him to my ways. All so that I wouldn’t have to trust.

“Now?” I said. Although my four-page trip prep checklist was nearly completed, we still had no sign of a court date. And the Ugandan courts closed July 15^th for the summer recess. If we went now, we chanced staying months in-country and breathing in all the emotional and financial expenditures that come from raising a family of four (or six) in temporary living quarters.

So I grilled him.

Why now? Where did this thought come from? Is this direction from God or just a boyhood craving for adventure?

Woman reverted back to girl, as if my wedding dress were freshly boxed. I looked at him as an opponent, seeking to rob my security more than the proven ally he was.

Nothing about adoption is safe. We sign papers and write checks and make mental timelines as if any part of this process is secure, and then are shocked when the battle waged in the heavenlies over these children’s lives intersects the natural and becomes our reality.

The fields of the fatherless are war-stained.

So when Nate made his suggestion to do the unconventional, and put my family of four on a plane with such uncertainty at its destination, I forgot what I signed up for. He’s crazy, I thought, as if even choosing to “disrupt” our steady-lives with the entry of two more – out of the birth order and past the years where pain can hide behind memory loss – was not crazy, even by my own standards.

So we got on our faces. Me, asking for confirmation. Him, balancing the certainty of what he thought we were to do and his wife’s faint heart.

Hours sitting in this pending decision revealed truth.

This had little to do with the outcome and everything to do with the weak walls I’d erected around my heart.

Here we go again.

The age-old story of our marriage came back to the same fault line. Trust. I had spent half a decade building a case around why the boy who came into my life at twenty-two, now man, was still unworthy of my greatest heart’s expression. I spent the other half- decade warding off supporting arguments for that case, often unsuccessfully.

Defense was never His intended position for my marriage.

So He gave me opportunities to advance. To take real ground. To see the strength in the man I was given, in the same way He sees the beauty in this weak-hearted woman who was his bride. To call me out of stale patterns of thinking and into the enchantment that is marriage — offered for every marriage, not just the perfected one.

Because really, every issue in my marriage can find its source in a brokenness between me and my heavenly Father.

Six days and ten bags later, we left. Our lawyer said “don’t come”*, our agency advised strongly against it* and my insecure heart chose to follow the lead of the man He had given me. I’m pretty sure I had missed many dress rehearsal opportunities to practice trust, but something inside of me said it’s not too late.

The stakes were high but the wee hours of the night revealed a little girl’s heart who longed to unclench her fists and fall deep into the safety of my Daddy.

I was created to trust.

And my Father didn’t make a mistake when He gave me a man so other that He would challenge my most guarded methods of self-preservation.

In the five weeks which proceeded from our last minute jump on a plane, I saw arguably more of the holy hand of God than in all of my life up until that point. Mountains fell into the sea and the waters were parted before us. He made us Israel and our children the descendents of history-made.

We returned a family.**

We stepped off the international flight which bridged the ocean between my children’s birth-country and their new home, battle-scarred and ragged, yet made to be glorious displays of His splendor.

All because Nate said yes when the Lord said go.

All because He gave me a man who would patiently lead me off the precipice of my fears in order that I might have an encounter with trust.

All because He mercifully dismantles the walls we put up between us and Him …. and is unrelenting about the display of His glory in us.

Happy 10 year anniversary, Nate.  This turning of a decade only means we have another one ahead. I can’t wait to see what He does.

 

*Please don’t do this at home! . Or, better put, please only under Parental supervision get on a plane and travel halfway around the world despite your lawyer’s wishes. We so appreciated the wise advice from our agency and their support along the way. In following the Lord’s lead to go to Uganda, we weighed their caution heavily. Our story is not a principle, nor a radical move for the sake of being radical — it was a knees-shaking-while-we-board-that-plane response to what we believed to be God’s prompting. We walked a painstaking process of listening to God, and respecting the authorities He put in place through this process. While on the surface it may look like we were bull-dog Americans, we went with the desire to respect the systems through which He is working adoptions and with the willingness to stay long-term if that was His plan.

**Life as a mama to four has required some adjusting. As of September 1st, I’m back writing here again — as often as I am able. Writing is my outlet, and inlet. When I write the world seems to tilt just so. Therefore I have hopes that I’ll be able to continue to post a few times a week here and on My Morning Chai. That said, my children are my priority. So when life gets full downstairs, the little room that is my writing and prayer room upstairs may collect dust. Guess that provides spontaneity to the very scheduled life I lead, now, doesn’t it?

First two photos compliments of Mandie Joy photography.