I am a recovering control freak and for me, the whole adoption processes, has been another part of my recovery processes. I say recovering control freak because being in control is something I still struggle with wanting. Which is funny because I know that control is just an illusion, that even when I think I am in control I am not really. I know that God is control and I want him to be. I believe that truth but unfortunately what I live out, well, that tells a different story. Because even though I believe the above truth in my head, this truth is making it’s way in tiny bits and very slowly to my heart. I have learned that what we live out shows what we really believe. Saying we believe something just shows that we can say it, NOT that we believe it.
The truth about who is control in my life was challenged this week when our social worker called Jeff. She told him that the main office of our adoption agency wanted us to refill out the preliminary international adoption application. She did not explain why and Jeff did not think to ask. I wanted to know why? In the absence of that knowledge my mind went haywire. What does this mean? Are we not allowed to adopt form Ethiopia? How could that be? We were originally approved to adopt from there. Will we not be allowed to pursue the sibling group we were hoping to pursue? I attempted to remember that God is control not me and this was NOTHING to get worried about.
Clearly, that lasted 2 minutes. The need to gain the upper hand and be in control was strong. For me sometimes that shows in self in my need for knowledge to know what is going on or that everything will be okay. I had to call our social worker and find out for myself what was up. I had to leave a voicemail and being the Friday before Labor Day weekend I figured my chances of her calling me back were not good. In desperation I tried to get others to assure me all would be okay. At that moment, it was not enough for me to trust that God was in control; I wanted to know that it was going to all work out.
This situation also brought to light an aspect of my struggle to let God be in control is my fear that he won’t do what I want him to. It’s not necessarily because I think I know what is best. It’s crazy isn’t? This is control mixed with a bit of fear of the unknown, and a smidgen of pride.
The beauty of God is even though I was behaving badly. He was gracious and our social worker did call me back. She answered my questions, which put my fears to rest. She also shared a bit of potential good news. It looks as though we may be able to move forward in pursuing the sibling group we were looking at. That is exciting and exactly what I was hoping to hear.
At the same time, there was a corner of my mind that had fear; wait is this really what we want to do? Isn’t funny when we get the news that things look favorable and that things may work out just the way we hoped, we think wait is this really the best? It makes me laugh out loud. What good is being in control if I am not certain that I know what is the best? Ah, and there it is I don’t know what is best. Which is always leads me to remember God does. He alone is God and I am not. This is a truth I continue to practice living not just saying.
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