Doubt

“When everything seems to be going against you, remember the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” ~Henry Ford

On that day when I sat in the mother’s room alone with baby J sleeping on my lap at church, I listened to my pastor talk about not just having knowledge of God, but having encounters.

Encounters.

It opened something up in me and broke me hard. That was the day I knew I could no longer ignore God and how He was calling my family to do something big. I’d struggled with doubt for years when it came to adopting and I naively thought, that after that moment, when I finally surrendered, doubt would simply disappear. God told me what to do. I was going to listen this time. So that was that!

So, so wrong.

It didn’t take but a blink, before the doubt started fighting back. And doubt, if you didn’t know, is extremely skilled in battle. Journaling, I wrote:

September 9, 2018

“It is certain, but I don’t know how.

I sat back there and I prayed for the how. How can I stay home? How can we pay off our debts? How can our marriage stand such a test? How can we physically and emotionally beat ourselves down with the hard truths and hard work of bringing a child back from a trail that leads to death. How?”

I fought back with that prayer. A prayer of fear. Of doubt.

I don’t know the how, but I know the answer. We will be going. We will bring home a child that has been thrown away by their parents and by their country. We will battle through the after effects of years of sedation, abuse, starvation, and neglect. We will come out the other side of this journey. We will love so very hard. And we will share. We will share every moment; beautiful, ugly, hard, miraculous moments…

…because God hasn’t thrown them away.

Right now though, in the waiting, doubt has many opportunities to play it’s hand. I wish I could tell you that God is leading us and therefore we are marching ahead, with blind faith and absolute certainty that settles as peace in our hearts. I wish I could tell you that.

But it would be a lie. It wouldn’t be our journey.

Instead we are pushing ahead, one step at a time, one fight at a time, desperately grasping for His goodness and reassurance while we struggle to remain faithful on a path where we cannot see beyond the next step and do not understand how we will ever reach our destination.

This week alone the struggle with doubt has been strong and at the end of it I find myself reflecting

and refocusing.

The thing with saying ‘yes’ to God is that it doesn’t all just fall into place without trials. You can’t just sit back and miraculously your debt disappears, your fourth bedroom in the basement gets finished, your adoption account gets fully funded, you get adequate time as a family of four to vacation and grow and prepare before everything turns upside down for a while. You don’t get a neat little check list that tells you what to do, how to do it, and when.

No, you have to do the work. Make the mistakes. Fail. Cry. Make plans that might not turn out. You have to CHOOSE to have faith in the plan because it doesn’t come automatically. At least not for me .

I started writing this post on Friday after dealing with a string of car issues and those familiar feelings of doubt. We’d no sooner managed to become debt free, aside from our house, when one car needed brake work. We’d no sooner built our savings back up from becoming debt free, when the other car needed brake work. Then engine problems. And here it came….

“How do we move forward with these set backs? Maybe it wasn’t the plan for me to stay home. How long will these cars even last? What is something bigger goes wrong?”

Oh, how that doubt and stress can conquer a person.

If we allow it.

The devil wears many faces and my goodness, he is good at what he does. Doubt is the face he wears for me, because he knows where I am weakest. But as strong as doubt is, God is stronger.

Again and again He’s reassured me, and this week was no different. Sunday came and I stood in the back row worshiping with my church and my family and every word I needed to hear, flooded over me that morning.

The music:

"I'm gonna see a victory
For the battle belongs to You, Lord"
~Elevation Worship

"And I will build my life upon your love 
it is a firm foundation
And I will put my trust in you alone
And I will not be shaken"
~Housefires

The message:

“If you’re under stress right now, victory is coming.”

If you’re up against something that seems impossible, maybe it’s because you’re not the one in charge.

“Stress is inevitable, being conquered by it is not.”

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. – John 16:33

How I needed church this week, almost as if the words were specifically chosen with me in mind. That’s my God.

I’d like to say that moments like this are enough to keep me from struggling with my fears, doubts, and stresses. But the truth is they are not. Not yet. As I mentioned, I’ve been here before, many times already in this journey, and each time the reassurance comes, I feel new resolve.

And each time, my weakness leads me to doubt.

I tend to believe that God is pretty okay with that. This isn’t just our adoption journey, it’s also our faith journey. And I think He’s glad we’re on both, no matter how bumpy the travels.