Trusting

I have to admit something - I've been struggling lately. And struggling with something that, as a Christian, I shouldn't be. I mean, I've been a Christian for over 20 years. I should have this down by now. But here I am, struggling to trust. There, I said it. Ever since loosing Noella I have struggled to trust God with my life. With my plans. With my family. 

We took a step of faith in deciding to adopt this little girl and I feel as though God slammed the door (the same door that He opened) in our face. How and why did He do that?! I mean, come on. We prayed and we prayed and we prayed some more and truly felt that we were led to her. And truly felt that we were supposed to adopt her. We saw God bless our fundraising efforts - we were able to raise $16,000 in just 2 short months. Nothing short of a miracle! And then we got the phone call. The earth-shattering phone call. The one that, as an adoptive parent, you never want to get. 

I struggled for weeks with sadness. I felt broken. I was suddenly questioning everything - from my ability to be a parent to God's purpose in all of this. And then the sadness turned to anger. And now the anger has turned to depression and feeling at a loss. All the time. 

How can I trust this God who allowed this bad thing to happen? I mean, I didn't sign up for this kind of thing when I became a Christian. I wanted a nice, happy life. Not one that would be filled with heartbreak and challenges. Didn't He know we already lost 2 children through miscarriages? Didn't He know we waited for years to have a family? Didn't He know we were excited to add this little one to our family? Didn't He care? All of these questions and no answers. 

And then I started going to a bible study, and began studying the book of Matthew. And I began to see that people who follow Christ have been dealing with heartache and difficult circumstances for years. And somehow in the midst of their pain, they managed to praise God. Even thanked Him. Whoa. Praising is one thing - difficult as it may be, but to actually thank God for those circumstances is another. How in the world were they able to do this? 

Take Mary, the mother of Jesus for example. Now, in my mind I had always thought of her as pretty lucky. I mean, she got to give birth to the Savior of the world. Hello! How incredible! But, she also had to face intense scrutiny and was probably ostracized by other jealous girls when the news got out. Probably girls she once considered friends. Who in the world would believe you were pregnant and still a virgin? Back then, they weren't able to do paternity tests (and I'm not sure that would have worked anyway!) so people had to believe her based on her word (and prophesies from the Old Testament). And hundreds of girls through the years had hoped and prayed that it would be them that carried the Messiah. And so to find out it was someone else probably left a lot of them jealous. And then there was Mary's fiancé Joseph. He must have thought she was crazy once he found out. And at first he wanted to "divorce" her (not quite the same as today's meaning of divorce). So, here's this young girl, probably a teenager, who has lived her life to please the Lord and suddenly her life is turned upside-down. Her friends suddenly hated her. Her parents probably didn't believe her. And her fiancé wanted to leave her. She was on the brink of losing everything. And do you know what she said? "Then Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.”... (Luke 1:38) She chose to follow God despite everything that could happen to her. She didn't know at this time that the angel was also going to talk to Joseph, so she chose God's plan over her own. She chose the difficult path instead of the easy one. The path that didn't make any sense at all. 

Wow. And here I am saying "woe is me" and "poor, poor me".  Sometimes I wonder why God chooses to use humans at all. I mean, really. We are whiny. And we grumble and complain about everything. And here is this example from the Bible showing what true submission to Christ looks like. And how to be joyful when life doesn't exactly go according to plan. Seriously, this hit me. Hard. Yes, loosing Noella was difficult and painful. Probably one of the most difficult things I've gone through (truthfully, I think it was harder than both miscarriages). But God is still good. God is still God. And God still has a great plan for our family. God can be trusted. Becoming a Christian doesn't mean life will be easy or even that it'll go according to our plans, it just means that we have Someone to go to in times of trouble. We have Someone to turn to who understands exactly what we're dealing with. And we have Someone who promises that His plans are to give us a future and hope (Jeremiah 29:11). 

So, if you're reading this, and you're struggling with whether or not you can trust this Jesus, just fall into His arms and know that He's not out to get you. He does have a plan for your life if you will allow Him to lead. He promises that He will direct our path if we only trust in Him (Proverbs 3:5&6). And He promises that these plans, although they may lead us through some valleys, will end up bringing us hope, no matter what we face in life. 

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