I visited with a dear friend last week, when I invited myself to her house for dinner-- and I adore that we have "that" kind of friendship. We talked about Lent, and I questioned her, “Did you give up anything
this year?” “Sweets,”
was her short reply. Uggh, I
thought. Out loud I guiltily
lamented, “I didn’t.”
I’m not sure why I even started the conversation because I am not big on
ritual for the sake of ritual. I’m
big on ritual if it gets you somewhere closer to Christ, which it does for many. Anyway, here’s what my
wise and precious friend Ginger said.
“You are so fasting. You’re
fasting from your baby.”
And here we are, at this sweet spot in international
adoption…the place between knowing and being known. I want to live in this moment, to savor it, take it all in;
and I want to get our little boy home as quickly as I can.
I wake every night, usually around 4:30am. My mind races to Levi, what he might be
doing at this time. I picture his
face and try really hard to trust that he is being cared for and loved and fed
the way that I think he should be (did I tell you he has rickets?). Do I really believe that our God is big
enough to care for a son on the other side of the world?
I long to race to an airplane and be by his side, and I
can’t stand the thought of leaving my daughters and beloved husband to bring
him home. I feel torn.
Wes King wrote a beautiful song that spoke to me in the
early years of infertility, oh so long ago. I was a young bride and dreamed of being a young
mother. Ha! I laugh at my youthful dreams: young
meant 23; now it means 41. But, I
digress. The song beautifully
says, “We thought you’d be here by now, your mother and I…I never knew that I
could miss someone I never met, miss someone I haven’t met yet.’’
How can we miss someone we haven’t met yet? I don’t really know how, but I know
that we do. Our family of
four-about-to-be-five misses him.
We long to wrap our arms around him. We can’t wait to make him laugh and read to him and hear his
first words to us.
And I know that this is truly Lent. It’s the absence and the promise, the
knowledge that somewhere deep inside God misses us. That in the living and dying and living again of Christ, God
is with us. It’s about
relationship and being connected to our Creator and knowing that this God who
is so much beyond our comprehension draws near to us in Jesus. So however Lent makes itself known to
us this season, may we know that in this time when Jesus set his face to the
cross and drew near to suffering that God was and is reaching out to us. He
longs for you. He can’t wait to be
with you. He misses you.
