"Blessings"

The following is a part of my reflection on “blessings” in worship from Sunday night (12/20/09). It gives a little history on our adoption process as we prepare to take off tomorrow.  (Rest assured our other posts won't be this long!)

It was a typical, warm summer evening in Dallas. We were eating on the patio of a Mexican restaurant with friends from college, enjoying the night and the chance to be together and to laugh at old stories once again. Two of the couples were pregnant with their second child, and we were talking about those expectations. And as the evening went on I said, “Well we have some news to share, too. We’ll be having a baby in 12-14 months. Of course that earned some surprised looks. “We’ve started an adoption process.” We joked about how that was our elephant pregnancy--a little longer than the typical 9 months, but bearable.

That was in July of 2006. Since that time we’ve had a steady drip of disappointments and setbacks. We certainly haven’t been alone in this, and I know that some of you have been in the very same boat or have experienced something quite similar or much more difficult. Its been a new experience for me. Its not that bad news came all at once. But it came in the form of the phone not ringing, in snippets of information, in rumors of delay, in having to redo our documents as they expired. Did you know fingerprints can expire! I think the government must imagine adoptive parents with sandpaper trying to change their identities.

What has been very difficult about this waiting is that it has not that a case of slow progress. But instead its seemed like the destination was receding from us. Imagine taking a cruise, and at a remote island stop, they let you take out a canoe, to paddle around. And maybe you take a little siesta in the canoe and wake up to find that the cruise ship is starting to leave. At first you can see where the boat is, and its a manageable distance away, and so you paddle towards it, but then it outstrips you fading away over the horizon. It leaves you paddling going somewhere, but never sure if you’ll arrive.

In worship planning the other day, we were working on the advent theme of hope. And a thought struck me that all hope is, is a manner of waiting. Hope is a certain way of handling waiting. And as I’ve looked back over the last 3 1/2 years, when its come to this adoption process, there have certainly been stretches where I’ve lost hope. I took a tourniquet and sealed off that part of my heart so that it wouldn’t infect the rest. But you know what happens when you use a tourniquet for too long.

As I’ve thought about this process, I know that its not just my family or just yours who have experienced something like this. We can sense the ache in the pages of Genesis, when God awoke the dormant hopes of a child for Abraham and Sarah--only for them to face chapter after chapter, decade after decade of waiting. Sarah’s cynicism grew to the point of laughing at the promise of God.

We can see it in Hannah, broken and praying at the temple, emotions roiling to the point that the priest thought she was drunk. We can see it in the disbelief of Zecharias, in the Christmas story, when he debates the possibility of having a child with Gabriel, the angel, and is struck silent for the duration of the pregnancy. Over and over in scripture we can see people stuck. Waiting.

But this may also be the image for Israel in about 6 b.c. and the decades before that. Stuck. Waiting. Wondering if God would save. Looking for his blessing.

In the Old Testament there were two really significant stretches of silence from God. One was in the span between Genesis and Exodus, when the people fell into slavery in Egypt. They went through hundreds of years of silence from God--of suffering and hardship; and waiting. And in a turning point of history it says in Exodus 2: “The sons of Israel cried because of their bondage, and they cried out...and God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant...God saw the sons of Israel and God took notice of them.” And those famous events of freedom and liberation and blessing came with Moses and the Exodus and the parting of the sea.

The other period of silence lies between Malachi and Matthew--again, over 400 years--no prophets...no word from God. Just suffering, humiliation, defeat, and waiting. In the Old Testament, the high point had been with David and then Solomon. Israel had real power. People feared them. But that wouldn’t last. They became a conquered and defeated people. Jerusalem was leveled and the temple destroyed. And they were able to regroup and rebuild, but things were never the same. Great powers marched through, and God’s people were pawns in other nation’s schemes. The Greeks swept through under Alexander the Great. Then the Romans.

And under Rome, some kings or governors were more understanding of Israel than others. But at the best of times, they were still an occupied people. Roman officials lived in estates or mansions, while the Jews scratched out a subsistence, and were taxed heavily on even that. The Roman flags and coins had what the Jewish people considered to be idolatrous images. Then at the worst of times, they were ground under the heel of the Romans, with ruler sacrificing a pig to Zeus on the sacred temple altar in Jerusalem. These were terrible days of silence from God...of waiting...of longing--wondering if they were forgotten, wondering if God would save, desperate for the fulfillment of God’s promises--for blessing.

How did Israel do with their waiting? About as well as we do. Some assumed that God wasn’t going to act, so they should. And they’d spark rebellion, maybe surprise a roman garrison or take a town, but the Roman response was swift and devastating. The rebel leaders would end up killed in battle or dead on a cross, and their movements died with them.

Isaiah prophesied about Israel’s time of waiting, and he described them as a people walking in darkness. (Isa 9) And in such a time, the line between hope and despair runs thin.

But the Bible tells us that God’s promises are sure. But his blessings may not always come when and how we expect.

For Darcie, Mark, and me, the silence of our waiting was broken at 1:25 on Sept 14th. I was getting up from my desk, to grab my bible to do a graveside at Llano when the phone rang; “Jeff we have a referral for your family.” It took a moment for that to sink in--a referral is a child. My shock at that sentence reveals that I hadn’t been waiting very well. I had almost come to think that adoption meant writing checks and sharing deeply personal information with strangers. I had lost sight of the fact that a child could be a part of the equation as well.

And so they sent his information and some pictures. I think I can speak for Darcie and Mark in saying that it was love at first sight. Many of you have commented that he has Mark’s eyes and a Raines’ forehead. And so the last few months have been a time of preparing and wondering, and putting that baby bed together. Mark’s first comment was that we’d need to get some more plug covers for the playroom.

Our new son is 21 months old, and I’ve made a habit of asking moms with toddlers how old their children are--trying to get a gauge of our son’s size. We have pair of pajamas that we think are the right size, so we’ve used the “pajama test” around the house. When Mark wanted to figure out which shelf his lego creations should go on, to be out of reach of little brother, we hold up the pajamas to get a ballpark height--and how far he’ll be able to reach.

We’ve called the other families who’ve been to that orphanage in Ethiopia, trying to get the merest scrap of news about our son, and what he’s like. Our manner of waiting has really turned toward expectation and hope and blessing. This has truly been a time of God’s blessing for us. And its added a layer of meaning to this Christmas, preparing and waiting for a child. Those three and a half years have been long ones. But God’s light of blessing, of eulogia, has settled on us. I appreciate the prayers and support of our church family, as we depart tomorrow, to receive a great Christmas blessing of our son. Our Christmas eulogia. Or in the Hebrew, blessing is berekah; or in the related language of Amharic in Ethiopia, Bereket.

Some of you have asked about his name, Bereket. I admit its a little difficult. Darcie tutors 6th graders, and she told some of them about it, and one said, “Well you’ll have to change his name, nobody can say that. You need to pick a good normal, American name, like...Miguel.”

And I’m sure Bereket will get West-Texanized somehow. But the discussion about keeping his name was finished when we learned what it meant. We really couldn’t wait three years for a child and get one who is already named “blessing” and change it!

As we all celebrate Christmas this week, we celebrate the visitation of the blessing of God on all of us. In the great prophecy of Isaiah 9, which I shared earlier, Isaiah proclaims: “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
-Isaiah 9:6

At Christmas, God reached into our world, and split wide the veil of darkness, that his light, his life, and his blessings would shine on us.