Sometimes we see a movie or hear a song that puts an image of life being ideal in our mind. But life is not like that. Life is not a movie and it’s not a romantic song. It’s real. It’s a beautiful perfect mess. Even when things work out perfectly.
I was on a phone call with my best friend several weeks ago. We love to share everything. While we were chatting away, she was staring at a walkway outside her window. In the middle of the conversation, she said “Loralee, I’m looking at the sweetest thing.” My best friend went on to describe this adorable couple strolling down the walkway. They had a newborn baby bundled to the point you couldn’t see him or her and the mother was pushing the stroller very very slowly and the father was walking backwards just as slowly. They were being so careful walking their newborn down the walkway; both were radiating love. From my friend’s perspective it was obvious that these were brand new parents and they were out for one of their first family strolls. We talked about them for quite a while. The image she described stuck in my mind. “How precious!” I thought, “A newborn baby is one of the most magical things on Earth and what a special time for that couple to have just born a baby and stroll down the walkway together in slow peace. It’s just as it should be.”
Throughout the few weeks following that phone conversation with my best friend, I thought about that couple quite a few times. It was around this time that our birthmother from our failed adoption in October called and said that she had reconsidered and wanted to fly her sweet baby down to us and sign the papers. But there were hiccups and drama along the way. The birthfather (although not being a proper father in any way we would describe one) was threatening legal action and I could feel that the birthmother wasn’t perfectly solid in her decision. Her family was dead against it – even though it truly was the best thing for the baby. Drama ensued. We decided that we could not help her bring the baby down. She would need her to pay for her flight and commit, if she truly was wanting to place. We had already spent five thousand dollars on this adoption failing once, we needed to have her investment. For a few days I believed she was just bluffing, but then she bought her flight and she got on a plane to place her baby with us.
During this time, I kept thinking of the couple my friend described and their newborn baby. I kept thinking to myself, “That’s exactly how it should be. It should be simple and easy to have children come in to your life and they should come in a peaceful idealistic way. That’s the way the Lord intended it.” I questioned all the drama that was swirling around me. On one hand, I felt that the Lord had led this little prospective daughter to us; there had been miracles on the way. On the other hand, the theatrics of it all were a complete turn off.
Then one day, right before the baby arrived, I was driving alone in my car up my street. I was thinking about that couple again – how I thought babies were supposed to arrive. I had that ideal image in my mind and I was talking to God about it. The way this baby was arriving was not the way I had intended it to. It was hard.
I then had a flashback. A memory flooded my mind of me driving up that same exact street four years before. I was on the way to the airport to fly to Uganda for the upteenth time to try to get my Ethan and I didn’t want to go. I was emotionally drained and the chance we would get Ethan were slim. I was filled with anxiety. Similar to the anxiety I was experiencing about this new baby arriving. I awoke from my flashback and I heard and felt God whisper into my ear in no uncertain terms, “Loralee, I do not send you easy babies. I send you your babies. You take them how they come for they are yours and no one else’s.”
I thought about my dear Ethan and I started to cry. How selfish I was being for telling the Lord how and when I wanted my babies to arrive – when He was sending me my babies as fast and as easy (and at the right time) as He could. I didn’t want just any baby. I wanted my babies – and how they came was how they came. I didn’t care how many times I had to drive up that street with anxiety. It was my street and they were my babies. And it was all worth it.
As every one knows by now, the baby came and went. For whatever reason, it did not work out. But I will be forever grateful for that experience because it was a not-so-subtle reminder to a stubborn woman. As I look at my Ethan and my Vienna and my Boston, I realize that life is not a fairytale ending – but it does work out perfectly.
To top off the experience with a cherry, my best friend called the other day. She had ran into the couple again. This time she got to see the sweet baby inside the stroller. She peered in to see a little brown baby. The couple had adopted. Now I don’t know the couple and I don’t know their story, but I imagine that it wasn’t as ideal of process getting their sweet first child as I had made up in my mind in the beginning. I also don’t doubt that it was no accident my best friend ran into them again. It was the Lord reminding me of the sweet blessings He has given a Blondie in Texas and that He expects me to welcome them in any terms they come. He knows me too well.
I send this message out to all who are struggling with a life issue that isn’t going as planned. I am slowly learning that the Lord has a plan that is so much bigger and better and more mine – than any of the best laid plans I have floating idealistically in my thoughts.
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