Monday, October 8, 2012

10/8/12

Dear Temple,
I hope this note finds you well and happy. I have a lot on my mind lately. Writing you helps me get my head straight. First, thinking about you makes me happy and writing to you makes me think about you. Second, sometimes putting things down on 'paper' helps clear thoughts. At least it can't hurt. I am a control person, Temple. That means I like to have control over what happens in my life. I am careful about most decisions and calculate desired outcomes before I make choices. I am also self-reflective and see how my choices effect strings of events in my life and I plan accordingly. This is also known as being boring.
Being a control person is hard because there is little in life you can control. Everything changes all the time. It is the way of things and a person can't change all that change. Trying to control things can drive you nuts if you let it. I don't know how I could cope with it except for that I am a Christian and when everything seems a muddle I trust God to see me through.
Tomorrow I am in a staffing to adopt a child from our area. There are two other families that are looking to adopt the same child. A panel of people will decide who gets the blessing. I have no control over. Your Aunt Crystal and I have been the second choice for the last few staffings. You get to the point where you wonder if something is wrong with you that you're not chosen. I know I'm a good father. Crystal is a good mother. I know we can provide a good and safe home for children. You would have thought we'd have a full house long ago. It just hasn't been so.
Most of the conversations I have with God tend to boil down to two questions. I'm either asking him 'why?' or 'why not?' God has been on my mind a lot lately. Like everybody I wonder what his plan is for me. I hope it coincides with my plan for myself. It can be logically confounding and tricky since we tend to make God agree with ourselves and our plans that we forget his.
It's kind of like that with adoption for us. We have been trying to adopt through the system for years. We have been blessed with Elijah, but still have those empty rooms that are ready for kids. When I try for something and it doesn't happen for me, I tend to think that maybe God is putting these roadblocks in my way as a way to tell me that he doesn't want this for me. If I don't pay attention to the roadblocks and eventually get what I was going after, and then I hate what I pursued, then it's my own fault for not paying attention.
On the other hand, I could say that this is a test to my perseverance. That this may be just a test of character. God may allow me to get what I'm going after, if I show him how much I want it by trying over and over again no matter what the setback. What if God is setting these roadblocks to my desires to see if I am a person of fortitude?
Both make sense. Which one is right? I don't know. I can probably guess that God will greet me in heaven and let me know that I was way overthinking things on earth. Maybe I'm not overthinking things and both logical reasoning strands were correct at the same time!
I wonder what your take is on all this.
Right now we have three kids in our home. We could have four kids soon or still three. When the foster children leave we will be down to one or two depending on what happens tomorrow. That is a lot of transition. It's also a lot of change for a control person.
If we don't end up being chosen for this little boy tomorrow I don't know if your Aunt Crystal and I will try for another. There are some other avenues we can explore. Other states we can look at adopting from, still through the system. We could take out a huge loan and go buy a kid from another country. We could kidnap, but that would be wrong. 
Maybe we'll just stop.
Your Aunt Crystal and I are a little tired of fighting for something that may not happen. There is a draw to just stop all this madness and just get on with our lives.
Elijah is an excellent boy. I love him very much and he's going to be a great man some day. He is enough for us. I just have this feeling that we were meant for more. Life is better when there are children around. We'll just have to see what happens tomorrow and make our decision from there.
I love you much and miss you always,
                          Uncle Justin

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