Number 8

I really should be working, but this blog post has been trying to come out for a week now.  Just haven't sat down to get it out...then friends post things like this:

As I came to the blog to type this, I saw my last post titled "Saying Yes"...well, there is a theme God seems to have me on...one I really thought I had gotten down...thought we had circled this mountain enough times I had learned my lesson...seven started adoptions, an adoption agency from the ground up, an orphanage in Liberia, an adoption ministry in Liberia, now a domestic program for waiting children, mom to seven, new church...haven't  I learned to say yes? Haven't I learned to let God be God..Lord of my life? As long as there is any area unsurrendered to Him, then the answer is: No!

Ugh! Really, God?! Haven't I said yes to enough? I mean look at Sally Sue over there, she __________ (fill in the blank with whatever you think is "enough")! Ask her to do something why don't you?  So for those of you who thought I had all this maturity, now you see the real me! :)

This has been just a few of my thoughts over the past few days as God has taken me back to a Sunday morning when Journey was just two weeks old.  I was teaching an adoption class at our church and through a speaker on a video we were watching, God told me there was another one.  Yes, another child.  I went home and wrote it in my journal.  I didn't tell anyone...not even John for weeks!  This would for sure get me committed to the loony bin! He gave me what I believe are some outlines of who number 8 is.  But as soon as He dropped the thought into my mind that we weren't done, I went to bargaining with Him!  I love babies!  So if we have to adopt again (yes, I meant "have to"...remember my attitude is the whole point of this post!), then I want a baby.  I want to bond or attach or whatever the professionals want to call it with this baby from the beginning!  I want to watch her grow up and protect her from whatever I couldn't have protected her from before she got to me even at a young age that caused her to need me to begin with!  And since I am not getting any older, God, would you please send her now?! Except I don't really think I can handle a baby now, so maybe wait a year or so, but if you wait a year or so, then I am starting over again, and I am really ready to be done with bottles and diapers.  So if we have to wait then maybe she should be older and maybe in about 10 years when I have recovered from the past two years?! Maybe send her now but make her the same age as Journey.  Oh, yes, that would give me THREE toddlers, maybe I didn't mean that! Ok, well you can send me a baby or maybe a toddler...or maybe not, but if you are serious about this, something has to give! I need a housekeeper at least.  My floors will never be swept again with just one more child.  Or how will I feed her or clothe her or have the brain power to listen to her lovely stories about nothing like little girls love to tell?  Better yet, God why don't I just tell you, I. Am. Done!

Silence

God?

Then finally...

You call me God.  You cry out to me as Lord, but you tell me what you will do or not do when I tell you there is more? You give conditions to what you will accept as my call on your life despite the fact you know adoption is the reason I created you for this time here on earth? You can not call me LORD if there is even one area of your life that is not surrendered whole hearted to me...all of it!

Matthew 7:21 says it this way: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven."  I am not saying that my salvation is hinged on if I agree to adopt child number 8 or not, but it definitely says that simply calling Him Lord, doesn't make him Lord of my life!  Surrender makes Him Lord of your life!

I have said many times recently as I come out of the fog of the past two years that I know God added the last three children quickly because if I had time to really contemplate how hard things were between any of them, I might not have said yes to all of them.  I don't mean the children are hard, I mean life has been hard....learning how to juggle that many children, those mounds of laundry, finances for a family of 8, and on and on.  I feel as if I am just now getting my head above the water I was drowning in to breath! And now God, you would ask me to add another one?

I am reminded of Jesus in the garden when He prayed and asked that this cup pass from Him.  If Jesus who was fully man but also fully God asked for His entire reason for leaving heaven to come to earth to be taken away, I think God understands when I wrestle a bit through the things He may be asking me to do....but in the end of the wrestling, I have to be willing to say as Jesus did, "nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will!" (Matthew 26:39). I finally got to that place in worship this week!  Lord, I have no idea how I would do that! I have no idea where another baby would fit into our lives, but I refuse to live my life with any area unsurrendered to you!  Radical obedience is my desire for 2013...even if that includes number 8!

There may really never be a number 8, I am sure not actively pursuing that right now (Mom, if you are reading this, you can breath again!).  Perhaps God is asking me to put my Isaac on the alter and will provide a ram instead of me sacrificing my "son" as He did for Abraham. (Genesis 22).  I don't know for sure.  But I do know anytime I have any area that I say to God...if this is the direction you are taking me, the answer is no, then I have an area that is unsurrendered! And as long as I have breath, I am determined to live completely and totally surrendered to the One to Whom I owe my life!