Just Keep Swimming

I think that there are many life skills that you can learn from the movie Finding Nemo. One of my favorite lines from the movie is the one where Dory is trying to encourage Nemo by saying, “Just keep swimming” It’s a phrase that can apply to many life situations and certainly summarizes how I feel right now.

Nothing in my circumstances with our adoption had changed. No background check means no moving forward. I am not happy with nor do I like this particular circumstance. But I can say two things that have changed in the past week. First, is that I continue to learn new things as we wait. Second, is out of nowhere my hope has been renewed.

I was doing what Dory from Nemo suggested but instead of swimming I “Just kept walking”. Picture a long winding road with tall trees and lots of growth all around it. The kind of road you can only see where you are and you have no idea where the end of this road is. If you are in the middle of that road, no matter how much you want to be done, or no matter how tired you think you are, when you wake up in the morning you have to start where you last left off which, is in the middle of the road. So there is a choice to be made you can stand there and complain, or you can “Just keep walking”.

It was funny, just yesterday I realized that I felt more hopeful than I have in a little while. I think hope can be like that. One day you realize, I don’t feel as hopeless as I did before. I started to think what changed? What did I do? Then I realized I didn’t do anything. I wish I could tell you the 5-step process to my new hopeful state, but I can’t explain it. I think the best explanation is God did it.

In the book Choosing to See by Mary Beth Chapman I was reminded how God sometimes calls us to do Hard. But He does not just call us He equips, prepares, and walks with us as we do hard. God brought to my mind one of the Mexico mission trips I took the youth on. Not what I think of as one of the hardest things I had to do, but nonetheless what God brought to my mind. I remembered how everyday I had to back the 15-passenger van up out of its narrow parking spot. I don’t do reverse. I wish there was a way to communicate to you how much I avoid reversing let alone, doing it in another country, in a 15-passenger van full of students. Every one of my students knew that. Everyday the most stressful part of the day was backing up that darn van. But God got me through it. We did it.

It was in reading how God met the Chapman’s as they walked through one of the hardest things I can think of. And how He has gotten me through many tough and sometimes hard situations, that God began to renew my hope.

I know that with God I can do this. I have the hope that we will get through this part of our adoption journey. I of course hope that the end will be soon, but if it’s not I will “Just keep swimming”.