What a Difference a Year Makes!

Last week I gave a talk at CBS, my Bible Study, to honor God and all that He showed us during our time of waiting. This post is a condensed version of my talk.

Well, what a difference a year makes! A year ago, we were in Russia fighting the battle of our lives to bring our son home. We were sparring with an unfair judge in a physical battle that I knew was running parallel with a spiritual battle to release my son into a Christian home. I also remember that we were packing our clothes and saying our goodbyes to the many friends we had made in Russia. We had been in Russia for over 4 weeks and no closer to bringing Alek home. The whole day is a blur. But I do remember that I felt ill and my heart hurt. All I could think about was that I was sacrificing my son, leaving him behind, and trusting him to God. As I think of our Genesis study this year – on a much smaller scale – I felt like Abraham giving Isaac up as a sacrifice. I really didn’t know if I would ever see Alek again if we left Russia without him. Yet, I was convinced that leaving him was what God was asking us to do. It was the hardest decision I have ever made. It was very tempting to try to continue to control the situation the only way I knew how -- stay in Russia. But I knew that God wanted me to leave Alek on the altar and walk away as a testimony that we trusted God. And so we booked flights home for the following day, packed our bags, Scott set up meetings at work for the next week, and we were going back home empty-handed and exhausted.

But, this is also the week that God delivered a miracle for us. This was the day that God moved in response to your prayers and thousands of others. It was God’s intervention that placed a new judge on our case, set a new court date, and I finally saw a vision of the completion of our adoption. People still ask me “Why do you think your adoption took so long?” and I have never been ready with a good answer…So, I reflected on this question and want to share the 3 reasons that God revealed to me:

1. In His goodness, God desired to give me a promise and believe Him for it.
2. Prayers for Alek needed to reach fruition.
3. At the proper time, the fullness of God’s glory was realized.

First, Believing God’s Promise of Becoming a Mother. In December 2005, we went to Russia to meet our then 9mo. old son for the first time. Upon returning home, I was expecting the normal time frame of 4-6 weeks to return to Russia to bring him home. It was also about this time that all sorts of doubts about my being a mother really began to torment me. Plus, I was again starting to struggle with a lie that I believe all infertile women struggle with – that if God really wanted me to be a mother, I would be able to conceive. In addition to these worries, I had met my son and was sure that God had chosen him for us, but my experience was not all fireworks or love at first sight. I mean, I thought Alek was an adorable baby, but I still didn’t feel like a mother. I came home from meeting him to realizing that I had only about 4-6 weeks to ready our home for a baby. I was starting to get overwhelmed. And as I looked at the calendar, I had signed up for a 4-day prayer summit the first week in January! Who had time to pray? :o) But I mustered up the strength to go and it was one of the greatest growth times of my life. During the summit, the leader asked if we might petition the Lord to reveal a new name to us. On the last day, the leader asked if people would share their new names. Well, I panicked. I had forgotten about the request…yikes, what should I do? I chose to run and escaped into the bathroom. Maybe I could stay in here until they were done. But while I was in there, God touched me and revealed to me – I give you a new name today and it is “Mother.” I started weeping tears of joy. I have never felt so loved before. As I shared my new name with the more than 50 women, mostly strangers, my excitement grew as I was confident that I would be called mother soon!

As months crept along and finally became a year, I was beginning to doubt God’s promise for me. As I returned to the prayer summit a year later, I was embarrassed thinking, I am sure everyone must be thinking poor Lynn, she must have heard God wrong. This was of course only my wounded pride and fears speaking to me. At one point during the summit, a woman came over to me and said that God had asked her to pray for me to conceive a child. It was strange and had it been anyone else I would have thought, this is crazy, but she was one of my pastor’s wives and I respected her and her relationship with the Lord. After she got done praying for me, I told a couple of friends what happened and actually laughed out loud. My friend said, just like Sarah…I immediately looked up Genesis 18 where the verses were and God spoke to me another promise -- that by this time next year, you WILL have a son. That was on January 6, 2007, and 9 months later, I was in Russia visiting our son and God did indeed make me a mother. As I laid eyes on my son for the 2nd time God had answered the woman’s prayer for my conception in a way that I didn’t expect – God forged our hearts together as mother and son. The other promise that I would have a son by this time next year also came true. We brought Alek home just 2 weeks before that promise was given to me the prior year.

As I write this, it sounds as if God was speaking to me all the time during my time of waiting, but He wasn’t. There were many periods of silence which tempted me like Sarah to take matters into my own hands…I asked myself, should we pursue another adoption, should we change adoption agencies, should we pull our paperwork and go to a different country, etc. etc. But thankfully, God gave me the strength to wait on Him to act on my behalf. I prayed Isaiah 64:4 many times.

The second reason I believe that the process took so long is that all the prayers for Alek had not yet been prayed. I know this sounds a little strange, but I distinctly remember God speaking this very thing to me during one of Ellie’s lectures when we studied Return to Jerusalem 2 years ago. When I think of all the prayers that went up for Alek during our time of waiting, it is mind-boggling. I thank you all for the many prayers you prayed for us and I will share with you one blessing we received in knowing that our prayers were heard.

Scott and I prayed everyday for Alek during our waiting time. We prayed for his health, and his physical and emotional development and those prayers were answered. I know that many of you prayed for our attachment, and that has been answered many times over – in fact, I can’t even go to the bathroom by myself anymore! God has let us “see” the answer to another prayer Scott and I prayed for him. After we had been home about a week, I was rocking Alek in his room. He was looking around and checking everything out. His eyes fell upon a figurine of a mother in a white dress holding a little boy that one of my core group friends had given me. He pointed to it and said “eesus” – the Russian word for Jesus. I was about to correct him, when I stopped myself. How did he know about Jesus? I wondered. We had, of course, prayed over him and sung to him "Jesus loves me," but we had not yet shown him a book with a depiction of Jesus or told him any Bible stories. As I sat there in awe holding my new son in my arms, memories of our waiting time came flooding back to me. I remembered that each night before bed, Scott and I would pray that Jesus would visit Alek in the orphanage and whisper in his ear that He loves him and that Mommy and Daddy were waiting for him. In faith I believe our prayers were answered, Jesus did in fact visit him and that is how Alek knew Jesus already. I firmly believe that God plucked Alek from the middle of Russia and brought him to Kansas because he is already chosen. I am not sure how, but somehow, I believe all the prayers that were prayed for him will contribute or have already contributed to that in some way.

Finally, I believe our wait was extended so that the fullness of God’s Glory would be accomplished. God spoke this to me at the end of our waiting time from Galatians 4:4 which says, “But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son.” The timing for God to bring Jesus into the world was planned so that the fullness of God’s glory and grace would culminate at the proper time.

I am not sure I understand fully what this means in Alek’s case, but I have come to recognize that everything that happens in life, and especially our suffering, is about bringing Glory to God. Just hearing stories about how people’s lives were touched by God’s power through a simple blog is amazing – but I am sure with over 10,000 hits to our blog, I don’t have eyes to see all that was accomplished for God’s Glory – which is probably good or I would become prideful. In the case of Abraham and Sarah waiting for their son, I believe it was the same. Their time of waiting – a WHOLE lot longer than ours!! – was surely like ours in that it was: a time of growing and wrestling with their faith, learning to trust God for his promises, and becoming friends with God.

I close with the verse that helped me keep perspective during the entire ordeal –
2 Corinthians 4:18: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. I repeat this truth to myself even now on a routine basis. By keeping my eyes on eternity, rather than on my present circumstances, God gives me eyes to see glimpses of His purposes here on earth.

Happy Thanksgiving!! As I asked Alek this week what he was thankful for, his first response was "Mommy & Daddy"....We are thankful for you too son!