Finally free.

Been wanting to post this for awhile...

About three years ago, my world began spinning out of control.  After finishing my student teaching in May 2010, I was excited to start my first "real" job as an autism teacher.  In short, this job was not at all what I expected.  Most teachers would agree that the first year of teaching is difficult regardless of the circumstances, and I was prepared for that.  I was not prepared to come home with bruises from being kicked or from dodging desks being thrown at me.  I wasn't prepared to be called horrible names and to be told "I hate you" so many times a day.  I wasn't prepared to be defeated by 5-10 year-olds.

By December, I was crying at the end of every day, getting physically sick on Sunday nights when thinking about going back to work on Monday, and ready to quit.  So I did what any frustrated female teacher would do in such a situation: tried to get pregnant.  

January passed, then February, March, April, and May, and somehow that school year was over.  I told my principal that I would not be returning the following year, even though I was unsure of what I would do next.  And I still wasn't pregnant.  

After about eight months of trying, I decided to go to the doctor.  Everything checked out fine on my end, so I encouraged my husband to go to his doctor.  He went, and the findings for him were not so good.  He would need surgery to correct an issue, and our chances of the surgery working were a toss-up.  We decided to go ahead and try the procedure, and the results left us in a worse situation than before.  

By this time, I had become a very bitter and cynical individual.  I hated my husband for not being able to give me the one thing that I wanted most in the world.  I hated my church because I was involved in so many activities but constantly felt as though I was encouraged to pull myself up by my bootstraps and continue trying to pour from an empty cup. Mostly, though, I hated God because I was breaking and He didn't seem to care.  In fact, I wasn't even sure that He existed.  Every day when I woke up, the whole world felt dark.  

The darkness continued for months and months.  When I look back over those months that turned into years, there are three specific things that God used to rescue me.

The first was when I came to City Pres in April 2012.  I'm not sure what even got me through the doors, to be honest, because by that point, I was crying every time my husband dragged me to church with him. I walked in and sat down on a back pew, arms crossed and heart hard.  Then Doug (the pastor) spoke some of the same words that we hear every week when we first come in.  "Welcome to City Pres.  We're glad you're here.  Some of you may be excited to be here and some may not be.  Wherever you are, we invite you to worship with us.  And if you just need a place to rest, please rest in Christ today."  I remember tears streaming down my face when I heard those words.  Rest.  I had been waiting for someone to tell me it was okay to do that for years.  

The second piece of rescue was Jeremiah 6:16, which I providentially found on my parents' refrigerator when I went home to visit.  "Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls."  Moments of darkness can easily turn into moments of weakness, and I often felt tempted during those months to do crazy things which could ruin my life.  In those moments, I remembered Jeremiah 6:16 and my grandpa, who had truly shown me what it meant to follow the ancient paths when nothing else made sense.  I knew I wanted rest, so I held on to those precious words.

Finally, a story from the Jesus Storybook Bible really rang true to me.  I was hardly reading my bible at all during that time, but this children's book was something I could actually process.  The story is at the very beginning of the book, about Adam and Eve in the garden.  Adam and Eve sinned and ran away from God.  But even in their wandering, God loved them so much that he went and found them.  Maybe I was not lost forever.    

Those three things are unquestionably significant in my story of rescue, but the final straw was when I went to a different doctor in August 2012.  He ran some additional tests, and then the unthinkable happened.  Suddenly, I couldn't hate and blame my husband anymore for not being pregnant.  It was me, too.  I was broken.

In the past months since that gut-wrenching news, God has broken me so that he could make me whole.  I've had surgery, and my issues were corrected, but not before all my pride in myself and my controlling nature were completely shattered.  My love for my husband was restored because I had come to understand his hurt in a very real way.  God took away the things that I wanted the most in order to give me what I needed the most: himself.

Our daughter, Piper Anna, was born on June 28, 2013.  I did not give birth to her in the traditional way.  We adopted our baby girl through an agency here in Oklahoma City.  This is not the way I had imagined my story of rescue ending.  It's better.

Through adoption, I have already seen grace in so many ways that I wouldn't have been able to otherwise.  A huge way is through our many friends and family members.  Adoption is not a cheap or an easy process, yet, because of our community, we have never felt more loved or supported.  I see birth parents differently.  Piper's other mom and dad are true heroes in my book, and I hope that one day our daughter knows how blessed she is to have four parents who love her instead of just two.  And ultimately, as you've probably heard before, adoption is a beautiful picture of what God has done for us as his children. It is incomprehensible to me that, before the foundations of the earth, He chose me to be a part of his family, too, even though there is nothing good in me.  Because of adoption, I feel like I am understanding the vastness of God's love for the first time in my life.

After meeting the birth parents of our daughter, our case worker told us something.  Baby Girl's birth father had a dad who was absent for most of his life.  What Conner does remember of his dad is that he was a very harsh man and a hypocritical Christian.  As you can imagine, Conner's heart has been hardened from years of the misrepresentation of Christianity that he received from his mostly absent father.  As Conner walked out the doors of the agency after meeting us that day, he gave our case worker a huge hug and whispered in her ear, "God knew."      

God knew.  On Conner's end and especially on mine, God has known all along.  Here I stand, two-and-a-half years after my original plan to have children, and my hands are empty of everything I held before.  Nothing is at all how I had predicted, and yet I'm so thankful for this beautiful story by the Author who knows what is best for me.  In the end, I have learned that the perfect job, the perfect church (which, by the way, doesn't exist), and all of the perfect biological or adopted children in the world will not bring me true happiness, because that is always and only found in Christ.  When I look at Piper, I realize that I am finally free.  But the precious gift of my daughter is not my freedom- He is.

"You can have all this world, but give me Jesus."