Someone once said to me, "Life is not about what happens, if you don't open the door; life is about what happens when you open that door." It is a great variation on the Bible verse from Revelations 3:20 ~ "I stand at the door and knock. If any of you hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in." Those words have had a major impact on my life. Turning 40 (the "half-way" mark) has made me see this more clearly as it applies to my own life the past 40 years and hopefully the next 40+ years yet to come. If I am to be brutally honest with myself (and all of you), I would have to say, I have lived most, if not all of my life, afraid to open the door, when I heard God's knock. I was at times in my life paralyzed by this fear - 'Please don't knock God, because I am not strong enough, good enough, ready enough to open the door to your will'. Satan is so deceptive in making us all feel that way, wouldn't you agree? It's scary to open the door... see what the Lord is calling you to on the other side. It might be messy; it might be hurtful; it might not be what WE planned, etc, etc, etc. Most days it was easier to ignore the knock. Some days it was easier to talk myself out of the knock that I know I heard.
Turning 40, for some reason for me, has made me more open to seeing the beauty in the free will/choice God gives us to open that door or not and step out in HIS perfect plan, because He knows us better than we know ourselves... not to simply dwell on the fear of opening the door, but to discover what good I can do, what blessings await, what joy and happiness I can bring others, when I trust that perfect plan for my life and move through the doorway. He prepared my life behind the closed door through trials and fires, through wonderfully happy times, through prayer, through scripture reading, and through all the God-moments He has brought me to in my life to some day feel ready enough, to feel strong enough, and to feel good enough. We can and DO live the life on the other side of that door doing the Lord's will, NOT in fear, but in trust... NOT in weakness but in strength. NOT in self-defeat, but in confidence! This is God's promise to us, when we follow HIM! This is what happened in our lives as we heard God's knocking, opened the door and walked over that threshhold... not wondering what happens if we OPEN the door, but finding ourselves wondering what happens if we DON'T open it!
Our story is not unique, but we feel overwhelmingly blessed, amazingly humbled, and truly excited to begin a new chapter in our life's story, as we open this door together, as a family... With a tremendous amount of prayer and talking to God, scriptural preparation, talking as husband and wife, praying for our family and about 2 years of time passing, we felt prepared to open the door, when we heard God's knocking! His timing is perfect! We stepped through the door into the world of adoption! God has called our family to open our hearts and our home to one of his many orphaned children from Ethiopia, and we couldn't be more excited!
In the last few years as our 3rd child entered school, I felt a tug at my heartstrings. My husband, JJ, would not say the same about that tug on his heart, however. We were pretty far apart on the issue of adoption! I would say that we were very much like polar opposites at best! Over time, as we prayed for God to either change my heart about adoption or change JJ's heart about it, we both agreed that we needed to forge our family ahead into a new direction - one more obedient to God. Yep, I think it is that whole turning 40-thing again - LOL!
What would that look like for us? Would it mean going on mission trips? Would that mean volunteering as a family more deliberately? Would that mean adoption? Only God knew the answer to our questions and what the perfect plan would be for our family, so we prayed for wisdom. We prayed for answers. We prayed for direction that would be without doubt what the Lord was calling us to do! Maybe turning 40 will do that to a person... make you feel more boldly about a life direction! It's a turning point, a half-way mark, a time of reflection on a life lived one way and now maybe looking forward to a life that needs to be lived more deliberately, for you only have this one half left to get it right!
JJ and I both started to see more clearly little "signs" about what God's perfect plan was for our family. It got to the point that JJ and I would have sharing sessions about we saw each day that drew us closer to God's calling for our family - a devotional here, a conversation with a person there, a whispered word in our prayer times, an unexplained change in our hearts, confidence in a direction that was not there before we asked God to show himself to us... We couldn't resist that knock at our door anymore! It was pretty loud... We, for the first time, weren't so much concerned about what would happen if we opened the door, we became more concerned about what would happen if we didn't!! So, thus we began the application process to adopt! Whoo hoo :)
A bit about us, as this is my first ever blog post... I can't believe I am doing this - whoo hoo! My husband JJ and I have been happily married for 18 years. We are best friends, really! We feel richly blessed by our 3 boys: Conner (age 11), Carson (age 9), and Chase (age 7). All 3 boys are very active in sports and in music. My husband is a high school assistant principal, and I am a stay-at-home mom, who works very part-time at our sons' school as the coordinator of a Spanish/Mandarin immersion program for young children.
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