When you wish you could see Him face to face…or back

September 18, 2013 by Kelli

A few weeks ago, on a whim, I decided to join the Tuesday morning Bible study at our church. The bratty teenager in me had been battling this decision for some time, because somehow I still feel like I’m young enough to say that the only people who attend Tuesday morning Bible studies are women who are older. And then I looked in the mirror, tallied up the wrinkles, remembered that I have three elementary age children and swallowed the pill of reality.

But I was apprehensive.

We are going through Beth Moore’s The Patriarch’s, and you guys we are three weeks in and it is completely wrecking my already tender heart. I feel like it was written just for me to experience at just this time. Had I done this study a year ago, I wouldn’t have been nearly as moved as I am today.

Last week’s lessons were particularly challenging, especially given the fact that last week was when I finally, fully laid down the adoption and said so out loud. Oh how my heart ached through the week. My soul was weary and weepy.

Then I read the story of Hagar and for a few days my spirit grew restless and anxious.

For those who may not know, Hagar was an Egyptian slave who lived in the house of Abram, serving as his wife, Sarai’s maid. Though Abram had been promised an heir by God, he and Sarai had yet to have a child and Sarai, in her grief and impatience, commanded Abram to take her maid as his wife.

“Since the Lord has prevented me from bearing children, go to my slave; perhaps I can have children by her,” Sarai told her husband, and Abram agreed. (Genesis 16:2)

It’s so easy to pick apart this passage and point out the blatant and glaring errors in this plot, but it’s good to remember a few things. First, as wrong and ugly as that practice sounds, it was not uncommon in those days. A female servant becoming a second wife for the purposes of bearing children was not considered wrong then, and though not a designed or desired practice by God, to Abram it could have seemed like a practical solution to what seemed to be a real problem.

Second, God uses flawed people who struggle in their faith to carry out His plans and promises and thank goodness He does, amen?

So Hagar and Abram conceived a child and Sarai, naturally, writhed in jealousy and bitterness because she got what she wanted but did not consider the outcome of such an ill conceived plan. Things got so uncomfortable that Hagar fled the house, escaping her mistress’s cruelty and this is where the story took the breath straight from my lungs.

As she rested in the wilderness, an Angel of the Lord found her and comforted her in her emotional suffering. He told her to return to Abram’s house and that the child she carried, who was to be named Ishmael, would receive a promise of many offspring.

There, in that wilderness place, Hagar became the only person, male or female, in the Old Testament to give God a name. The God who Sees.

“I have now seen the One who sees me,” Hagar said when the mist of the moment faded away. (Genesis 16:13)

God saw her pain and her distress and He met with her. It is generally believed that the Angel of the Lord referred to in Genesis 16:7 was God Himself and, as Beth Moore so beautifully explains, the literal Hebrew translation of Hagar’s words is “Have I really seen the back of Him who sees me?”

In Exodus 33:20, God allows Moses to see Him, but He had to do so from inside the cleft of a rock and he could only catch a glimpse of God’s back as He passed by because God’s glory is too great for our feeble human eyes. “You cannot see my face,” God spoke. “For no one can see me and live.”

I was so struck by this lesson. First, just the reminder that God sees us in our distress, when the wilderness closes in, was something I desperately needed because I have felt so terribly lost and alone this year. But He sees and He knows and the comfort that brings is difficult to describe.

But I had another emotion, one so great that I almost felt a panic well up inside me – I wished I could see Him. I longed so desperately to see His back, to have a physical, real and tangible glimpse of Him. I wished that He still revealed Himself to us today the way He did in Old Testament times. I wished I didn’t have to listen so hard for that still small voice because what I wouldn’t give for a burning bush right now.

It took me a few days to work past that before I could embrace the Truth of today: We have the revealed God available to us in scripture, and His power ignites from the pages of His word. We glimpse His back when we read His Words in scripture. He hasn’t need to issue in person promises anymore, because all of His promises were complete in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. And so what now?

I look up and praise the One who sees me. He has revealed Himself to me, and His glory is evident every day. I will likely never have a moment when I come face to face with Him incarnate on this earth, but that does not diminish His power or glory, and oh does it make the prospect of heaven seem so much sweeter.

If you, like me, are longing to see His face today, take comfort in the fact that He Sees yours, and rejoice in the knowledge that you are not alone. I am praying for everyone who reads these words, that they would have a fresh encounter with the God who Sees.

Happy Wednesday, sweet friends.

Filed Under: Adoption, faith, Family, Grace Tagged With: Adoption, Beth Moore, faith, God, Grace, grief, The God who Sees, The Patriarchs

On writing and grief and finishing that book

March 26, 2013 by Kelli

I finished my initial read through of the book last night. My first reaction? Thank God it’s not too bad. I’ve never done this whole writing a 450 page novel thing. This is my first rodeo, so I didn’t know what to expect. Couple that with the fact that it’s been almost three years since I started this draft of the book and you have a writer who’s a bit nervous.

I wrote the beginning of the book a long, long time before I wrote The End. What if it didn’t connect?

Now admittedly, there are a few gaps to be worked out and the ending needs some sharpening. I wanted to finish so badly that my fingers were literally flying over the keyboard. It took me a little over two years to write the first 150 pages of that books. It took me just shy of 9 months to write the final 300 pages.

The story finally came tumbling out.

In a lot of ways, the book writing process very much mirrors a birth process. Only, honestly, I think it’s mentally and emotionally harder to write a book than have a baby.

I am connected to this story in a way that no one else will ever really understand. The characters became real to me. I dream about them at night. I hear their voices in my head. It all sounds so strange, but it’s not unlike the connection I felt to my unborn children.

I knew them before I saw them. I dreamed of them. I was connected to them in a way no one else could be, because they were a part of me.

Parts of my story are connected to this story. I used to feel a little ashamed and embarrassed about how long it took me to write this book, but I realized in the last week as I read through it that I needed to take that time. There are parts of this story that I could not have written if I hadn’t had the experiences I had.

I needed to experience childbirth and motherhood.

I needed to experience the heartache of losing the hope of a child.

I needed to experience the darkness of depression.

Friends, the last few months have been very, very hard. I’ve tried not to overdo the drama of it all on the blog, but I have not been in a good place. I am always right on the edge of an emotional breakdown. Most of the people who see me on a regular basis know this all too well as I basically cry at the drop of a hat.

In truth, I hardly remember the month of January. It’s as though that entire month has been blocked from my subconscious. I have never felt more alone or experienced a deeper pain than I did in that month. I couldn’t eat, I was in a constant state of fatigue and I lived from moment to moment in a fog of emotional pain.

Feburary is a bit brighter, but the memory of that month is shrouded in fog. That was the month I began to process my heartache – to share it and open up about the depths of the pain I felt.

March has been a little better, but the wound is still fresh and the grief can be set off at any moment.

And in these two and a half months since grief crashed down on me, I’ve written 175 pages. The words poured out and they became cathartic and brought about healing in an almost beautiful way. I transferred my grief to my characters, people who were experiencing a darkness much deeper than my own.

I don’t know if I wrote the story well, but I do know that writing the story helped me heal.

Writing a book requires that you pour your heart out. It’s hard and long and arduous and painful, but in the end, a sort of life is birthed from the process. Your hard work produces a miracle. A piece of you is transferred to the outside and you have a tangible evidence of the labor and pain.

It is, indeed, like the birth of a baby…if you were birthing a baby while running a marathon and spinning plates on a long, tall stick. The metaphor gets convoluted – roll with it.

I’ve passed my book out to my first round of test readers. I have several people lined up waiting to read it and I’m both excited and terrified. I know it needs work, but I also believe in the potential of the story. There are edits to comb through and rewrites to prepare for. There are holes to fill and there’s probably more research to be done.

(Oh sweet mercy, how I hate research. Can I just take a brief moment to tell you how many times I wished I had been given something easier to write about? Why couldn’t I just make up my world and my people? Historical fiction?! Oy…)

But all of that is okay, because there is still room for healing in my heart. The world isn’t dark and lonely anymore, thanks to a few people who have stepped up beside me and begun walking through the grief with me, and also thanks to the process of pouring my heart out to the story that I was given.

I needed to write this story at this time – to give birth to the characters in this way. Soon I pray I will have the opportunity to introduce this book to the world, but for now I covet your prayers as I begin editing. I long to present a book of excellence – a story that brings honor not to my name, but to the God who entrusted me with these stories.

Will you pray with me?

Filed Under: books, faith, Grace, Novel, writing Tagged With: Depression, faith, Grace, grief, healing, Novel, writing

Not Impressed

January 14, 2013 by Kelli

I’d like to go on record with saying that I am so far entirely unimpressed with the year 2013. Really, I’d be fine if we skipped it. Like an old hotel, I’d like to move straight from floor 12 to floor 14. Bell hop? Anyone?

It’s been a rough few days and I have the bags under my eyes, the twisted muscles in my neck and the knot in my stomach to prove it. I look at the calendar and I look to the heavens and I wait. Because things have to go up from here.

This morning, I flipped open my (in)courage daily inspirational calendar to this quote by Holly Gerth:

Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1

“I’ve always thought of those words in the context of believing in God…But that morning it seemed the One Who Loves us whispered that part of faith is also about believing that our obedience makes a difference – when we can’t see the results.”

The past few days were hard for more reasons than one. I talked my kids through the events that have transpired over the last few weeks and it broke my heart. I sat with my nine year old as anger and pain and doubt clouded his crystal blue eyes.

“Why would God let this happen?”

“We have a good family and we want to love a little girl who needs a family. Why wouldn’t God let us love her?”

“Why do these bad things happen?”

“What’s going to happen to those kids in the orphanage?”

His questions were great. They were deep and real and honest and beautiful and I didn’t fully know how to answer them because I have the same questions. So I told him.

I told him everything I’ve been telling you and myself for the last ten months. Hope is slow. It’s so slow that sometimes we can’t see it.

I told him that God promises to be the Father to the fatherless and we have to believe with a faith beyond our sight that He is there with those children. We have to believe that they experience God in ways that we never will because He is all they have. We have to trust that He hasn’t forgotten the children – all the children – around the world who are waiting for love.

We have to believe and in this moment, we must build an altar for our kids. We must set a place for them to look back on and remember. We must guide them in this thing called faith that so often requires blind action.

Officially, our adoption is not yet terminated. There is still a thin thread of hope, but that thread gets dimmer each day. I feel like I’m preparing to lose a child. I imagine that this is much like it feels to miscarry. We haven’t given up hope entirely, but we are preparing ourselves to move on.

But can I share the miracles in this story of ours?

Friday, after I listened in on a call from the Department of State for adoptive families in process, I hung up the phone discouraged and defeated. I sat next to my husband and sobbed in his arms. In that moment I felt like it was over completely.

You see the thing is, I’ve always thought I would adopt a child from Russia. I’ve been waiting for so long for God to give us the signal to move forward, but I never once doubted that He would. It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t bring home a Russian child. Not once.

But Lee, my steady and wise husband, has a different vision. He has a passion for adoption…not just Russian adoption. To him, whether the child comes from Russia, India or America doesn’t matter. This brought me a lot of comfort, particularly because the idea of adoption was initially difficult for him to embrace. He had deep reservations, but in the course of this past six months, God has really opened up an excitement in Lee about the beauty of building a family through adoption.

Miracle.

Later that night, I sat down and opened an email from an old college friend who didn’t even know all that was going on inside my heart. This is part of what it said:

I’m writing to you because God has been sending me clear messages for you. I’ve been praying for you all and following along here and there on your journey. And every time I read one of your posts, I get an image of Christ riding in, like a soldier redeeming this situation for good. EVERY TIME you write something about the current situation in Russia or your heart breaking over the possibility of loss, the words “promise” and “redeemed” come flashing in my brain. I immediately get a sense of urgency to tell you that God will follow through on the promise He has given you. He is good. He has made a promise to you. He planted seeds so long ago in your heart for this country and for the people there. This horrible situation will be redeemed. His promises will be made known to all who know you and hear your cries.

She ended her message with a beautiful prayer that I have printed out and read over and over. Because I’m so heartbroken right now that I don’t know how to pray. But her prayer gives me the words to lay before the altar.

Miracle.

My heartache goes beyond the potentially failed adoption. There are other things mixed in that have worked together to form an emotional tsunami. But this one thing I know – God is good. He has not left the throne. Right now, I cling to the fact that our faith must be manifested in obedience. Like the quote mentioned above, we have embraced our faith through obedience and we are learning more and more each day about what it means to live courageously – even when the steps of faith don’t look like we thought they would.

We took a risk in moving forward with the adoption. It was a step of faith. It was obedience. And in our obedience God has worked miracles. I pray He’s not finished. I pray that the redmption of this story does include the completion of our adoption.

But I’ve no doubt that our family’s story is not finished yet. I believe my friend’s vision. I believe that God has redemption in store for us and we wait in expectation with hands held high. And when it is all said and done, no matter what the outcome may be, we will build an altar of remembrance.

We will look at our children (all four of them?) and we will point to these days and we will say, “Look, kids. Look at what God has done. He is faithful!”

Pray with us?