When Peace Doesn't Come

I feel compelled to touch on some of the tough things in parenting or maybe more specifically the difficult struggles in adoption. Maybe more aptly, this post should be labeled "The Ugly Side of Adoption". I know it is not warm and fluffy, but I think there is a time and a place to address the "reality" of adoption and not just what may be portrayed in amazing pictures of "forever families" on Facebook. 

The Ideal Family Home

Our Crumbling Family Home.....

Even our family, on the surface, looks pretty good. But I will tell you that it's not all (or even mostly) fun and wonderful. We certainly have had some significant challenges in our life that we do not necessarily broadcast for the world to see. Knowing the challenges that we face as well as the struggles that so many families experience, it brings forward the question: What happens when peace doesn't come? I understand that we can have internal peace even when there is external conflict, but what do we do when that external chaos continues day in and day out until families are on the brink of despair? How is it that we develop that internal peace when our world falls apart around us?

The easy answer as a Christian may be to simply pray and believe with confidence that God answers prayers. Hmm...I do believe that. I really do. The problem is, God answers in "His" timing and nine times out of ten, God's timing has been drastically different then my own. And...there is certainly no guarantee that God will answer in the way that we "think" he should answer. In fact, God may even answer in the complete opposite way then what we "expect".

I've certainly been there and prayed for healing when healing didn't come. Many Christians would inadvertently contribute to this underlying feeling of being a failure at praying as well. I went through Beth Moore's "Breaking Free".  It was a wonderful study, but I still was not instantly "healed" and my children as well were not instantly healed. I sincerely and truly turned these challenges over to the Lord, but the trauma kept coming back. I was even told by loving members of the family that if I "truly" turned this trauma over to the Lord, He would take it from me, and I would be healed.

This again though depends on our perspective of what "healing" is. We are not always physically healed. Sometimes we are. I believe that to be true. On the other hand, people do actually die and it is actually in God's plan for some of us to join Him in heaven sooner rather than later. It would also make sense that we are not always emotionally healed as well. True and complete healing will come when we are resting with the Lord. Until that time, we live in a fallen world with sin and consequences of that sin all around us. I believe God sometimes leaves us in a place of suffering. Job suffered for a very long time. God allowed Satan to test Job and in the end, Job's faith prevailed, and His love of the Lord remained strong. How do we grasp onto the Faith of Job? Does it just come to us naturally or is it something that we have to work at and pray for daily?

Years ago we lost our twins in Ethiopia. I don't believe it was due to a lack of prayer, lack of faith, and certainly not due to a lack of love. God simply decided to take them home instead of orchestrating their complete adoption into our family. We have other children where we've prayed for complete healing, but God brought our children through numerous interventions, surgeries, counseling, and even chemotherapy before the "healing" came. With some, we are still waiting on that "healing" to come.

What do we do in those moments (or maybe very long seasons in life) when we are waiting on the Lord as our life is crumbling all around us? How many of us Christian adoptive parents are in survival mode simply trying to do the best we can to protect everyone in the home? We have many friends going through trials and struggles that they never expected to face. We ourselves have had significant bumps (huge craters) on this journey into the realm of adoption. I receive multiple emails and phone calls each week from families falling apart, children/teens leaving home, treatment centers, law enforcement involvement, financial hardship, bankruptcy, divorce, buckets full of secondary trauma, and basically families desperate to find new or alternate placements for children who joined their family through the miracle of adoption.

How did we end up here? We felt a distinct call to help others. We felt called by the Lord to adopt. We believed that God called us to love a child (or two or three or 12) and we moved forward in faith. Maybe naively, we thought that loving them and teaching them about Jesus would be all the medicine that was needed, a perfect solution to this horrific situation: this dilemma we call the Orphan Crisis.

Ok...In the future, I want to write more about the Ugly Side of the Orphan Crisis, but for now, I think I'll stick to writing about what do we do after we bring our kids home (whether it's from the hospital as a newborn, a four year old from an Eastern European country, a ten year old from a Haitian orphanage, or a fifteen year old from the US foster care system). Surprisingly, you will find similarities in ALL of these placements. Many people are very unaware that Yes, a child adopted at birth, is still impacted by the Seven Core Issues in Adoption and more than likely does in fact have a trauma history. Who knew?

So, what do we do when we hit not only little speed bumps along the way, but we encounter the Grand Canyon and there is literally no way across this great divide without suffering serious injury? Do we close our eyes and jump with abandon? Do we try to catapult our way across? Do we do like Nik Wallenda and pray to Jesus as we walk on a tight rope across the great divide? If you haven't seen this guy, it is amazing to see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1lXWhiOPW0

The difference being, after the stunt guy gets to the other side of the canyon, he actually accomplishes the task and is then standing on solid ground once again. With us adoptive parents, we may not be back on solid ground for years, and years, and years, and years......


What do we do to sustain during these difficult times? And how do we find hope in the midst of the storm?  I'm going to try over the next few weeks to post (hopefully) some strategies that have been helpful in understanding the Seven Core Issues in Adoption and some of the ways we have at least attempted to obtain inner peace even when outer peace is still in process.......

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering  produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love  has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. ~ Romans 5:3-5