She Changed Her Mind

The birth-mother, that is. We found out on Wednesday. I have been thinking about what I would write since then, but now my mind is totally blank. I've heard several times recently that we only ask God "why?" when bad things happen, but when this first happened and we thought it was good, I did ask why. The easy answer to come to is the He loves us. The answer is the same when bad things happen, it's just not as easy to come to. I had a hard time remembering that God is love when Michael resigned from Columbus Baptist, but God used a song from a CD Michael was listening to to remind me of that from the very beginning this time. I cried a lot on Wednesday but since then I've been OK. I kind of feel like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop emotionally - can I really be this OK this fast?

Um, a few more details - apparently Amy is planning on also trying to get her boys back and parenting all her children. Becky (our social worker) seemed like she was being very intentional in letting us know this was the end with Amy. There were a couple of things that we didn't have to do as far as our adoption process goes because Amy came to us - now we have to go back and do those things (make a photo album of us and write a generic letter to expectant parents) so that Catholic Social Services will have everything they need to start showing us to expectant parents. Becky has told us since she did our home study that they were really in need of adoptive parents. Apparently there is only one other couple in the adoptive pool that is childless and a lot of the time girls want to place their babies with childless couples. She had told us repeatedly not to worry, that we will be snatched up quickly.

I've tried to be gracious when people ask questions like "what if Amy changes her mind?" I guess I don't really want to talk about it and, like I said, Becky didn't really leave that open as a possibility. But even more than that, God has given me eyes to see (and realise and remember and keep in the front of my mind) that Amy changing her mind again is not where my hope of children lies - it lies with God alone. Our faith is in Him and our eyes are on Him.

Michael talked with Pastor Paul on Wednesday night. Paul told him that several of the Armour-Bearer families were going through really hard times and he believed that they were all attacks from Satan, not to destroy our faith (because He's not strong enough to do that) but to make us ineffective to minister. That was a perspective that I hadn't come to on my own. After I got the phone call on Wednesday, I remembered what Brian said in small group on Tuesday. He was talking about the man born blind (in John 9?) and said that he's asked himself what would he be willing to give up so that God could get glory for one moment in time. I wouldn't have chosen this but I'm asking God the help me live in and through this in such a way that He gets glory.

I want to end by thanking our friends, family and church family for all their prayers - we can feel them. Really.