Waiting

I am a horrible waiter. Is that a word, waiter? I mean I am horrible at waiting. I vividly remember the longest waiting place with our adoption. Those last 6 weeks before our referral phone call seemed endless. Every day was like 58 hours long and I thought the call would never come. I was a crazed person. I tried hard to function normally, but the constant, "what's next?" was maddening to me. In hindsight I know I learned some amazing lessons and when it was all passed, it was so obvious that every part of God's plan and timeline were perfect for our family.

Well, here we are again, in this "waiting place." I wish I could say what we're loving every minute of it and that I am just resting in the wisdom I've gained with my past waiting lessons. But, that would be a lie. The bottom line is, we're back to 58 hour days. And I hate it.

The crazy thing is, we've been waiting for 13 months now. That's when we started this process. 13 months ago. And honestly, it hasn't been so bad because we were in the part of the process where things were supposed to be fuzzy and I was okay with that. But that's not the case now. See, last week, we decided we were going to tell everyone why we had been living like crazy people for the last year. It seemed like it was time to share our hearts and our calling. We decided to do this because we were pretty confident that everything was moving forward right on schedule and our departure was pretty much a done deal. We had prayed about an available job, communicated with personnel on the field there, and felt like we might have our match. We were getting really excited.

Then one afternoon last week, things went a little haywire for us. We began to be included in a series of e-mails between ourselves, some of the company doctors, and our deployment consultant. They had questions about the peanut allergies of 2 of our kiddos and wanted some detailed info. In the course of about 30 minutes and about 8 painful e-mails, they decided that our potential job match was a no go. Because of the peanut allergies, we were disqualified from not only that country, but about 1/2 of the continent. Wow! Didn't see that one coming.

So, we have no idea what happens next. We are waiting and praying that there will be a better fit for us. We are hopeful that this is just a temporary setback and not the end of the road. They are supposed to contact us "soon" to let us know what options we might have.

In the meantime, I am fighting hard against the grumpiness that I would like to give in to each day. I am trying not to be short-tempered with my children when they ask me questions about the future that I cannot answer. I am trying hard not to think of the "what-ifs" that want to parade through my mind. I keep reminding myself that God knows every detail of my journey and that He is not surprised by a peanut allergy issue. I try to thank Him for using whatever means He wants to get us to the place where He wants us to serve. However, this exercise does not come naturally to me. It takes effort. I don't like it, but I am going to keep on fighting my natural tendencies and choose to trust that God's timing is perfect. Even if I don't like it.