Hopeless

It's 11:00. I am trying to move. Get ready for the day. Go to the grocery store. Get ready to host a cheery cookie exchange tonight for our Sunday School class. But something has changed since yesterday. At about 10:00 last night, we received an email from another person in our same position. Someone who also has a child at Ajuuja. Someone who talked face to face with our agency yesterday about this situation and the long of the short of it, is that things look pretty grim. The facts are, that our agency gives a surprisingly high dollar amount to Ajuuja each month. Referrals have been moving at a snails pace for the past six months, which has obviously limited the amount of money that has come in, recently. How long can our little agency really support Ajuuja, while the regional government won't release any of these kids. Also, if they don't withdraw their financial support, then this regional Mowa will continue to get the benefits without having to do the work. The hope is that this will drive them to sign the paperwork. Needless to say, the towel is being swirled overhead and is about to be thrown. But as soon as the towel is thrown in, the fallout is severe. Our agency will no longer have the rights to the children in the orphanage. This will all take place fairly soon. What does this mean for the Goose? That is the hardest part. What will happen to him? Where will he land? The orphanage can not survive without our agencies help. The orphanages in the region are already overcrowded and losing funding from other agencies that can no longer support them. Kids are already being left on the street there. There is a famine there.

Everyone knows adoption is often times met with great disappointment. However, many times the disappointment, (which I am in no way, shape, or form minimizing), is hard because birth parents change their minds. In this case, N does not have known birth parents, and he has no known relatives. Who will feed him, hold him, love him?

So, in all these questions, we are asking, "Where are you, God? Do something! You set us on this path. This is the eleventh hour! This is when you are supposed to move!" As we both expressed our anger and disappointment with God, we still knew in our heart of hearts that there is nowhere else to go. Through tears and grief we prayed. Not like we ever have before. There wasn't any, "thank you for this day," "give us guidance," "help so and so." It was a prayer from a place of grief that neither one of us have ever experienced. It was a prayer that was so hard to pray, because we were praying big - praying for a miracle. Praying that the heart of the person who is responsible for signing off on N's paperwork would be moved at that very moment to sign his papers. Praying for N, who is the ultimate sufferer in this. At the end of this long emotional plea with God and after the word "Amen," we both said something that must have been impressed upon us by God. "This is how God must feel when he wants his children to be at home with him." Most of the time when I think of Jesus, I picture him walking around with his arms extended, head slightly tilted, a calm and joyful presence seeping out of him, with a few kids, adults and a lamb or two in his wake. I don't picture him weeping as we were for people to come to know him and "come home" to him. We are separated from N and he is ours. He is our son.

As you can see, our hope in this situation is gone. It feels hopeless. I've thought a lot about hope in light of this turn for the worse this week. I've heard a lot of people tell me things about hope, but I don't think that if I hope hard enough, that N will get to come home. When I was in elementary school, I was in the kids choir at church. Throughout the year we could choose to take on the challenge of memorizing verses, have good attendance and memorize hymns. Since hymns are a thing of the past, I know that the hymns I still have memorized are from the time in my life. So, thank you Ms. Pat for making me memorize them for a time like this:

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly trust in Jesus’ Name.

On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

When darkness seems to hide His face,
I rest on His unchanging grace.
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.

His oath, His covenant, His blood,
Support me in the whelming flood.
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my Hope and Stay.

When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh may I then in Him be found.
Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne.

We still do hope that N comes home, we hope he is OK, we hope we will get a new referral and grow to love that child as much as we love N, we hope that if we can't bring N home that we can get him somewhere safe, we hope we can see what God is up to in all this, we hope for so much, but we know that the only thing we can really know is the hope of Jesus.