Sometimes God asks us to be braver than we are  . . .

I’m not a very brave person.  I hate scary movies, don’t watch the news, avoid sadness if at all possible, and carry other’s pain deeply.  I’m a feeler to the millionth degree and I often find myself avoiding things too much because “I can’t handle it.”

And then God put adoption on our hearts and I was thrown into a terrifying, heart breaking journey.  I faced many fears- money, special needs, international travel- and shed many tears- over children with such severe special needs I feared they’d never hear “yes”, teenage kids asking for families who never got one before aging out, and birth parents making brutally hard decisions to leave their babies.

I “survived” China with surprisingly few tears (given my tendency to weep over anything) and then found myself sobbing in the hotel bathroom the morning we came back to the States.  I wept for a long time over our new son’s deep loss.  Yes, he now had a family but he lost his birth family, and now his birth country and everything that was familiar to him.  He had joined our family almost fearlessly and I marveled at his brave, sweet heart at the same time that I mourned his deep losses.

And then, we got home and it seemed like he had been in our family forever.  He walked into our house like he’d been here forever and hasn’t looked back.  He is fiery, silly, and so sweet and lovable.  I marvel every day that God chose us to be his family and asked me to bravely say yes to facing my  fears.  I thought I’d made it through the “scary” part.

Then, we went to his first cardiology appointment and as the cardiologist spoke foreign words to me, words I wasn’t expecting to hear and had not prepared for, I realized I wasn’t done “being brave.”  I realized that, once again, I was being asked to be braver than I am, to be the mom I never imagined myself to be, and to lean so heavily into God because the truth is . . . I really am not brave.  None of us are brave, but we are asked to trust.  Trust God when the unknowns are scary, trust God when nobody has an answer, trust God when we don’t understand.  I don’t understand why some kids will never have an earthly family, I don’t understand why some kids have broken hearts, I don’t understand a lot of things.  But I do know God holds us through these moments.  He takes our hands as we walk through these moments of deep sadness, and we realize it’s not how brave we are but how trustworthy He is.