By Jordyn Glaser
“The Life Letters” is an ongoing series designed to encourage foster and adoptive parents, as well as provide inspiration and insight to all pro-life readers.
(Oregon Right to Life) — In early 2011, my husband and I made the exciting and nerve-wracking decision to submit our application for adoption for the very first time. We filled out the online paperwork, and shortly after hitting submit, I was on Etsy looking for baby announcement ideas and searching for names. We were going to have a new child in the family, and I was giddy with expectation.
We were officially accepted into the Ethiopian adoption program on May 1, 2011, and then we spent the next four years waiting for a child who would never come. Ethiopia eventually shut down all international adoptions in 2018, and our adoption agency closed its program a few years prior due to a lack of active cases.
Brian and I continued to pray over the situation and concluded that we were not supposed to give up just yet. One door had closed, but we began praying for God to open a new one. And He did. We connected with the director of a domestic adoption agency, and after several lengthy phone calls, we decided to begin an entirely new adoption process. We now had technically applied and paid for two adoptions, and we still did not have a baby. People around us began to ask questions and doubt our choice to continue. This time around, I did not search for announcement ideas or share our news on social media. This process I held much closer to my bruised and tender heart.
His Perfect Timing
Adoption and fostering are the equivalent of a marathon in relinquishing control of timing – timing in the wait to bring home a child, timing in attachment, timing in their salvation, timing of physical and emotional healing that may or may not ever come this side of eternity.
I have found that many people in the adoption and foster community cling to the verse 1 Samuel 1:27: “I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him.” This verse is in reference to Hannah speaking of the birth of her long-awaited son, Samuel. A child she deeply longed for and prayed for. As believers, we love the encouragement these words provide, but what we tend to forget is that just a few verses before this, Hannah is described as being in “deep anguish” and “weeping bitterly”(1:10). Hannah is even accused of being drunk because of the degree of her struggle. This is what the wait feels like.
The wait is hard.
And for those that need to hear this – your struggle is valid.
But if we continue along with Hannah, the narrative shifts, and verse 1:20 says, “So in the course of time Hannah became pregnant and gave birth to a son.” Did you catch that? Not the fact that her prayers were answered and she finally held the son her heart had so deeply ached for. No, the real message here is in those first six simple words – So in the course of time. This was not Hannah’s timeframe or plan – it was God’s. It was completed in His perfect timing.
Purpose in the waiting
In 2015, we were finally matched with a birth mother, and in late spring, our daughter Esme was born and placed into our arms. I knew in that moment why God had made us wait.
Without the wait – the struggle, the confusion, the hurt – I would not be the mother to the specific child God intended for our family. The years I had counted as wasted time, God had always been working.
There was purpose in all of it.
The Bible is full of waiting people. Hannah and Sarah waited for sons. The Israelites waited for the Promised Land. Joseph waited in prison. Many named and unnamed waited for healing. And the world waited, and again waits, for the Messiah.
God is never late – but he is also never early.
The seasons of silence and waiting can be uncomfortable, but it does not change the fact that God is a loving father. He wants good things for his children, but he also knows and sees things that we do not. In adoption and fostering, we are not in control of the time frame, and we are definitely not in control of the outcome, but we can control the posture of our hearts.
Don’t lose hope.
Stay the course.
If you are still waiting, God is still working.
