Help my Unbelief
I know my last post was still a bit ambiguous, because at that time we didn't know anything for sure about what happened to the babies. And even now, I'm not sure that we know for sure.... but we have a conclusion from the detectives.She lied.About everything.For nearly five months.Everything we had believed and trusted was false. The hope of adopting twin baby boys by Christmas. The sonograms, the baby bump, the gifts she gave us for "the boys". It's still astonishing to us that someone would deliberately deceive another person (or in our case, many people) into believing something so important, so life-changing. I still feel like it was all just a really bad dream. Unfortunately, a bad dream that left us with a $7950 loss, hours upon hours of (now useless) paperwork, background checks, home-study updates, phone calls, e-mails, fund-raising, and emotional energy. It all seems lost.But God.
He promises that with Him, nothing is lost. He promises to those who love him, that He is the repairer of broken walls, that he brings beauty from ashes and makes ALL THINGS new. Honestly, I'm having a hard time believing this fully right now. But I have to keep trusting and keep praying, "I believe...but help my unbelief".I've had some really important conversations lately and I'm thankful for the beautiful truth-tellers in my life who remind me. It's ok for me to be heart-broken over this. It's ok that I'm not joyful today. It's ok to feel like my faith isn't strong right now and that I don't have to hold it all together. It's ok to say, 'yes...I feel like I'm in a wilderness".I struggle with grieving - I think because I'm often comparing my broken-ness to others'. In my mind I tell myself, "yeah this is hard...but it's nowhere near as hard as..... (fill in the blank: human trafficking, slavery, homelessness, dying of a curable disease with no one to help, etc., etc.) But my friend pointed out that I would never sit across from a friend or someone with tears of suffering and say, "yeah...well that's not as bad as...." And she's right. I only do that to myself.Why is it so hard to allow ourselves to feel the pain of suffering? I think especially as a Christian, we might believe the lies that "you should be joyful always....your suffering is not important because you have Jesus who suffered, you should be grateful for what you do have and bring your pain into perspective..." Even Jesus would say this is a huge lie that needs to be tossed to the wayside. Jesus wept over the suffering of his loved ones. He kneels down beside the broken and cries too. Not because He is hopeless, but because He is Love.“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland." Isaiah 43I have much more to say about all of this, but it will need to come out in waves. I hope that somehow, this all will be an encouragement to someone out there. Maybe someone will find this who is in a similar place, and needs the reminder that IT'S OK. We don't have to have it all together. We don't have to be sad and quickly get over something. Pain is pain - and it all matters to the God who is Love.