Struggling to Trust God in Uncertainty

Last year, we started our adoption journey which included; submitting our formal application, completing our home study, and creating our profile. All of which happened in such a fast-moving and efficient pace that we felt like this was truly where God wanted us to be.

Just two weeks after officially getting approved, I received a phone call from our case worker. There was a birthmother who was born with a rare birth condition, and we were being asked to consider our profile being shown to her. Our case worker gave us the gender and due date of the child and a link to more information about the condition. Doctors were monitoring the baby to see if they could detect any signs of the same birth condition and thus far the baby did not exhibit any signs.

We researched and prayed hard, and then decided we wanted our profile to be shown to this birth mother and reached out to our case worker with our decision. This was early June.

Our caseworker informed us, the birth mom wanted to wait until her next ultrasound before making her decision. So we waited.

In late-June our caseworker informed us that the ultrasound was looking great and that the birth mother would be looking at profiles in early July and would make her decision 1-2 weeks after reviewing her options.

Agony, is not a strong enough word to describe the feelings we felt during this time. We were aware of this situation almost 2 months prior, it had been on our hearts and minds almost non-stop, how could it not be!

It was also extremely hard not getting attached to the situation, we felt at times like this was "too good to be true," and wondering how many other profiles this birth mother was being shown. Who else was on the list of options for this baby? You can't help but think "who better than us?" especially when so many wonderful people in our lives felt the same way.

Our anniversary was on a Saturday and that week and we knew we'd be getting the answer sometime before then. We really had a mix of feelings, one of them was "what perfect timing! Right before our anniversary and planned babymoon trip, how wonderful to get the news that we could be parents." and yet also "this feels too good to be true, what if we get the answer that it is a 'no'."

And then the morning before we received our news I read from my devotional. All week I had been reading about the Shunamite woman from 2 Kings. Thursday's reading said this:

"The Shunamite woman knew there was hope even in the most devastating of circumstances. She had been promised a son when she was barren, and now she tenaciously held on to that promise even though her little son lay dead on Elisha's couch. "It's all right," she said to her husband, knowing full well that their boy was gone. The God who had given her the promise wasn't gone. She knew he wouldn't forsake her.

"It's all right." Can you express that sentiment even when your world is crashing in on you? Perhaps not. Remember, however, that even in the most agonizing of circumstances, even when you feel abandoned, even when tragedy strikes- God is there. Trust his word and gain assurance from the Shunamite woman who, in the midst of appalling circumstances, could say, "It's all right." " ("Women of the Bible" by Ann Spangler & Jean E. Syswerda, page 232)

We heard from our case worker that the birth mother chose a different family and so that evening I re-read my devotional and I wept.

And both Chris and I grieved what could have been, it was too good to be true after all and we didn't know how to truly feel. Chris was mad at God for a time, I wasn't too pleased with God either to be honest, and we both wrestled with so many emotions. We went on our babymoon and decided to view it as the perfect getaway after our news. Grief turned into melancholy, something I believe protected me over the course of the next few months.

The rest of our Summer felt like an entire year with high stress work situations on both mine and Chris' side, as well as an emergency room visit after Chris threw his back out and passed out in my arms and then he flew across the globe for a 2 week work trip.

September and October flew by and then the Holiday season began. Chris and I both felt a disconnect with one another, we just struggled to communicate our feelings and needs and talked about it together, but couldn't come up with a solution. We felt stuck.

We also both stopped praying, individually and together. I think we both felt resentment and thought "what's the point?" We were growing bitter with God and even our relationship with him felt distant.

For a little over a week in December, Chris had a work conference in Florida. I tagged along and we extended our stay there to spend some time at Disneyworld together. It was the vacation I didn't realize we needed. We reconnected as husband and wife and had so much fun out there, it was healing for sure! We came back home and got prepared for the Christmas chaos. And ended the year the way we have been ending them the last 5 years, with no baby.

Now here we are only 2 days into 2025, and Chris and I were reflecting on that incident this summer. I brought up needing to have a reason for everything, I need to rationalize and I analyze things to death and that situation just never made sense to me. Why would God dangle the carrot, so to speak, and then yank it away? Then my wonderful husband stated that maybe it wasn't God, but the adversary working instead. He continued talking and I started tearing up.

I always try to find life's silver linings and I am so turned off by any evil that it never occurred to me to blame the enemy. I'm always looking for God in my life's situations (he is mighty and all-knowing and powerful after all) that I neglected to even suggest that Satan could have had his hand in this.

Maybe we let the enemy win this summer, and that is why I started to cry. We pushed God away, which is exactly what Satan wants, we even pushed one another away for a time. The enemy seeks to destroy and he meddled his way into our thoughts spewing lies and doubt.

Though we did stop praying, we both continued to read from our Bible and attend church and have spiritual conversations, and I believe that is why we didn't fully succumb to the adversary's schemes, Praise God for that! But Chris and I want to pray fervently in 2025 even when things are not going our way, even when situations confuse or frustrate us, even if we make it to the end of 2025 and still have no baby.

So I guess I just wanted to remind anyone who may be struggling with their relationship with God because of frustrating, unexplainable circumstances 1) We are all given free will and live in an imperfect world 2) The enemy will deceive in the hopes to destroy 3) God keeps his promises, have faith and lean on him in times of trouble as well as in times of prosperity.