I don't need God...I'm Wonder Woman!

Adoption is mentally and emotionally hard. I think about it all the time. Throw in a relocation, a change of your schedule, friends, and ministry area and you go from a person who feels like you've got it together to someone who is kind of lost. You have a blank slate and no clue where to start.

Kev and I did student ministry for nearly 20 years (plus a couple years of church planting and missions). That's half my life. I worked side-by-side with my husband in ministry the entire time. This new season of ministry is going to look different and I'm looking for my place. Maybe my place is going to be more in the home and local school and not a formal ministry job setting where I've always been. Maybe it's going to be more with individuals rather than a certain age group. Maybe a ministry area will open up and God will let me know that's where I need to be.

After an excellent pity party, I realized something about myself.

I don't need God.

I didn't label it that way or even notice I'd gotten to this place. Sometimes I am just on a roll, things are going well and I've got it under control. I don't need God--I've got super cool gold armbands that glow when you put them together, a gold lasso and cool powers. Truthfully, don't we all want the armbands, lasso AND the powers? I know I do. At this point, I'd settle for the Underoos I had when I was 5 years old! Sometimes I am just too busy to notice I've gotten to the point where I'm looking to myself for things I should be finding in God.

Then there are times I feel alone, I have lost my connection with God, I don't know what direction I need to go or I just don't have the answers. Those days I'm known as Inadequate Woman. That name doesn't have quite the ring to it or even a cool outfit. I'm not the perfect wife. I'm not the perfect mother. My quiet time with God... Wait, what's that again? The only quiet time I'm aware of is the first five seconds in the bathroom before the girls realize I am there. I don't have it all together. I feel guilty and tell myself I could've done better. Typically, this is the time my head decides it's a great idea to look to others for my value. I try to find it in my children's love, a friend's validation or maybe other people's approval of my parenting or work.  Sadly, even at low points I look first at others when I should first look to God.

Am I consciously living my life this way? No way! What believer, much less pastor's wife, in their right mind would stand by the statement that they don't need God? Isn't that the whole point of salvation? Or how many of you would be OK with confidently proclaiming to the world you are completely insecure and need your job, kid or friend to validate you? Not me, but how's that for irony? I don't consciously do or think this way on purpose, but don't we all slip into these patterns if we are honest with ourselves?

Moms and Dads, how many of us find our value in our children? Our life revolves around them and I'm not talking about in a good way. I'm talking about the way that we have elevated them above our spouse and God. This is a destructive pattern and it's not good for our children, the very ones we are desperately trying to love the most. We are striving in every area of parenting to be the most educated, most entertaining, most hands-on, most creative, most involved parent. We attempt to be a one-man or woman educational version of Disney World. We desire and attempt to meet our child's every need--let me correct that--their every whim. They cry, we run. They drop something, we pick it up. They are bored, we create a Pinterest experience for them out of thin air, glitter, goldfish and a wipe. We do or fix everything for them. They learn little to no initiative, self-discipline, independence or creativity. When we realize we aren't succeeding, we beat ourselves up and just try harder. This vicious cycle is centered around ourselves and not even centered around the ones we believe we are putting first. We are trying to meet an unrealistic standard and be the perfect parent we think we should be. We unknowingly cut our children and God out of the picture. It's not about God, it's not even about the kids anymore, it's about us.

Now on to my workaholic non-parental side. I'm talking to the side of myself that finds value in where I work and serve. The irony here is in ministry I am directly serving God by serving His people in His name and so many times I don't do it with His power, I rely on my own power. That's messed up, but we do it all the time. Once again, we cut God out of the picture. This doesn't only apply to those in ministry. Whatever your profession or area of service, when we place our value and success in something we can create, we have missed the boat dramatically. We allow ourselves to settle for subpar satisfaction from serving an idol we have crafted for ourselves. People, there's a ton of Bible stories about this kind of stuff, it's not a new thing. We just don't physically mold a statue to worship. We worship people and jobs with our time, focus and energy.

When we find our value in anything else other than Christ we cheapen the sacrifice He made for us. We allow ourselves to accept validation from an imperfect, sinful source. Why do we constantly seek approval when as believers we have already been adopted into God's family and been accepted? Because, secretly we want to be Wonder Woman. We want to be able to do it all. We want life centered around us and not centered around God. We don't want to need God.

So, what do we do? It's a daily battle. We fight to center ourselves around Christ. This is the core problem of our sinful nature and we must stand against it. Know and read the Bible. Spend time in prayer. Find people who direct you back to God and your walk with Him. We have to change our perspective and thinking. The fact is when we center our lives around ourselves, our children, our families, our work--it becomes an idol that stands between us and God. God loves us, our children, and our families more than we ever could. It makes sense to center ourselves around him so we can love and serve them in His power and not our own.

My prayer is that I remember the reason we are adopting isn't about me. It isn't so things can happen on my timetable. It's so we can extend God's love to a child and give them a home. I pray I remember my value comes from God and not who I am or what I can do. Most importantly, I thank God for the spiritual lows because they remind me of how I have misguided myself and how we have a forgiving loving Father right there with us whether we are focused on him or not.

Adoption Update:
Our homestudy agency, Carolina Adoption Services (CAS), has completed our homestudy update and our placing agency, All God's Children International (AGCI) has approved it. AGCI has sent us a document we can use to prove for grants and other purposes that we have an approved homestudy. We are waiting for three notarized copies of our homestudy from CAS. Once we receive those we will send one copy off with the I-800a Supplement 3 to renew our immigration status through the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) a component of the Department of Homeland Security. Our current approval with USCIS expires in August. After we receive approval we will send our immigration approval and one of the copies of our notarized homestudy to receive an apostille from the Department of the Secretary of State. Once that is returned to us we will send those documents to AGCI to be translated and sent to Bulgaria's Ministry of Justice (MOJ) to update our paperwork there. A referral could come at anytime in this process, this documentation is to keep our current status updated and make Bulgaria's MOJ aware of changes we have made in location and number of children we are prepared to adopt. Yay! Praying for God's timing and not mine!

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