To feel or not to feel

     I debated with myself whether to blog this month.  I have no new updates.  I am unable to obtain any information or pictures from the orphanage because China is entering a 2-week shutdown for the Chinese New Year.  When I emailed Helen (a contact in China) she told me the orphanages usually only do an update every 3 months so "we can request in March, I hope you can understand".  Part of me wants to yell and stop my feet like a toddler, "NO, I don't understand"!  The other part of me wants to debate this statement like a logical, information-filled 5th grader (I know, I have one), and say "She is my daughter!  Because of an unplanned virus, I can't come and get her.  This is unprecedented.  Can't some exceptions be made?  Why can't the orphanages be kind enough to share our children (in some images or words) with all of the waiting families each month?"  The more mature side of me says, "Trust in the Lord, patiently endure this season.  He is in control."

    No doubt my faith is a big part of this journey.  But God does not want me to be dismissive of my deep feelings that I am experiencing.  Trusting in the Lord and believing He's got this, does not mean I have to be okay with it all and have zero negative emotions in regards to the situation we are in.  I just finished reading a book called Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero.  In it he states, 

    "To feel is to be human.  To minimize or deny what we feel is a distortion of what it means to be image bearers of God.  To the degree that we are unable to express our emotions, we remain impaired in our ability to love God, others, and ourselves well.  Why?  Because our feelings are a component of what it means to be made in the image of God.  To cut them out of our spirituality is to slice off an essential part of our humanity."  

   This author believes that many Christians were taught that feelings are unreliable and not to be trusted.  A distortion of belief has led some of us to think that some of these strong emotions are an indication that "something is wrong with our spiritual life".  I for one am not often described as a "feeler", and therefore have found myself dismissive of my feelings.  But over time, the Lord has nudged me and pointed me to places in the Bible where Jesus displayed strong emotions.  He wept when his best friend Lazarus died, he got angry when people were abusing the sacredness of the temple, he experienced frustration with his disciples when they just weren't "getting it", and he showed distress and fear as he pleaded with God and cried tears of blood in the Garden of Gethesmane.

    Through scripture, the book I mentioned, life experience, and even this adoption process, God is growing my capacity to feel.  And at this moment, I am not ashamed of my thoughts of frustration with this process and the unplanned delays.  I do believe with my whole heart that God is not wasting this time and what He is working out is for my good.  I can see that in this wait He is working on me, growing me in my abilities to parent well, love more completely, and hold on loosely to things of this world (like my plans).  

    However, even though I know these things and notice Him at work, I too should take time to sit with my feelings.  This past year was a challenge, and 2021 is shaping up to not be much easier.  The process of adoption that was laid out before us, in the beginning, told us we would have Katie home within 12-15 months.  January 2021 marks 17 months since we started our first stack of paperwork.  If I am going to be honest with myself, that just plain stinks!  And at this 17-month mark, we do not have even an inkling of communication as to when we might be able to travel to bring Katie home.  No one is giving any timelines and we have no plans for China or what traveling there might even look like.  I am frustrated, hurting, and confused by this.   God KNOWS this, so why should I stuff it and hide it?  

    Today I will sit with these feelings.  I may have a heated conversation with God about it too (He can handle it).  I pray for His embrace to comfort me in my sadness, His strength in my weakness, and His steady hand to hold me tight so I don't get swept away by the storms of this life.  And through it all, I will trust.  Hebrews says, 

    "So do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord.  Remember the great reward it brings you!  Patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do God's will.  Then you will receive all that He has promised."  Hebrews 10:35-36

 My Study Bible describes patient endurance as "the capacity to continue to bear up under difficult circumstances, not with a passive complacency, but with a hopeful fortitude that actively resists weariness and defeat."  I am not going to pull myself up by my bootstraps and work harder or tell myself to get over my feelings and find a distraction to numb them.  I will cling to Him, in my sorrow, and in my joy.  I can patiently endure for my hope is in Him, what He has done for me, and what He promises He will do for me one day.  


                                                                          Katie's room, ready since last February, now has this puzzle hanging on the wall that my dad put together this winter.  


Comments

  1. Jill and Jon (aka Nanny and Pap)January 27, 2021 at 3:00 PM

    We're with you all the way Jess! In the ups and in the downs. We love you!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Marker Moments

Image
     We all have those times in our lives where something happens and the trajectory of our life changes and does not go back to the way it was before.  It could be something momentous like graduation, marriage, or children or something uninvited like divorce, sickness, or death.  At other times it is a series of small decisions or lessons learned that guide us in a new direction and then we look back over time and see we are no longer who we once were.       It is hard to believe this summer my family and I will have been in this home for 6 years.  It is even harder to believe how much has changed in my life in what seemed like just a few short years.  But what I want to focus on and remember is what God has done in me over the last year.  This past weekend was what I am calling a "Marker Moment" in my life.  It is a point in time that I chose to mark with a specific act to say "THIS is worth remembering".  On 2/3/24 I chose to be baptized in my church, not because
Read more

This is Love

Image
 It’s Christmas Eve.  We have had quite a year as we settled in at a new church, raised a puppy, and continue to learn how to engage and parent a pre-teen and teen.  We are in a new season.  One that is sometimes uncomfortable as we encounter new territories in parenting and in our faith.  But we are all learning and growing as individuals and as family and encountering God and his presence in new ways as we step into all that he is doing in our church, our family, our ministry.   I say all this as a simple update and to segue into one of the things we have been learning in our new church community.  We have been pondering and encountering the Holy presence of God and viewing our response to Him.  Do we fear the Lord and keep him in his proper place of honor and worship?  Do we make him too small in our lives?  Do we know his heart and desire for us?  So as these ideas swirl in and around me, this advent reflection poured out: Lord, when you visited the Israelites by cloud and fire on
Read more

I can't, but You can

      I cried myself to sleep the other night.  Well, almost.  I lay on my pillow as tears streamed down my face and my thoughts raced with all the ways I had messed up, wasn't good enough, and told me all the worst things I could think about myself.  I felt utterly defeated.   The interesting thing was the catalyst for this wasn't that big of a deal, my day had been good, and a few hours earlier I had felt fine.  But that didn't seem to matter at the moment because just that quick my mind had made me out to be the worst.       I say "almost" because as I lay there wrestling with my thoughts, I eventually got to the place where I had had enough.  All these things weren't true, and deep down I knew it.  Yet, after a full day, I felt too weary to tell myself anything different.  Thankfully, I had somewhere else to turn.       This might sound  cliche, overly simple, or like a platitude, but I will say it anyway:  Prayer is powerful.  How do I know?  Because ju
Read more