Bittersweet: Mother's Day

Orange marmalade.  Chocolate.  Grapefruit juice.  Rain on your wedding day.  Celebrating my two boys on Mother's day, yet longing for the child I don't yet have.  Bittersweet.

I've mentioned a friend of mine a few times on this blog...she has 4 children of her own and last year she and her husband brought home their daughter, number 5, from China.  On her blog she used the word bittersweet a lot while waiting to bring her daughter home.  I didn't really get it until now.  (actually, I just read her post from yesterday--it is called "Mother's Day is Bittersweet.  I promise I didn't read it until I was editing this post!!)

Life is so beautiful.  I have two healthy and amazing little boys.  And yet.  Yet we wait for a child we do not know.  Yet we ache along with all the women we know who have lost children.  Yet we feel the sting of the women we know who are unable to have children. This is the bitter.

I was able to celebrate my sons yesterday and the wonder of parenting.  I got to take goofy (albeit cute) pictures of them.  I watched my 2 year old sleep peacefully in his car seat while my 5 year old practiced t-ball...the sweet.

Yesterday my heart was heavy with prayers for the Congo.  I was told by our social worker this week that the meeting with International Social Services (ISS) and the Congo did occur.  We haven't heard yet what the outcome will be.  My heart is heavy because we are nearing the end of our adoption course and our homestudy, which means that we will need to choose a "track" for our adoption to take--whether that be a Canadian, American, Congolese, or some other option.

It has been made clear to me that God wants us to wait on Him.  A few weeks ago I started to open up my IPad to look at what our options were, if the Congo closes.  As I opened the cover, I was overwhelmed by the prompting, "The meeting hasn't happened yet.  Wait for me to decide."

It was clear to me, in that moment, that I shouldn't move on until we heard the decision.

Now that I know the meeting has happened, I pray for the decision to come quickly.  What was made clear to me yesterday, while praying for our child, was that we still have time.  "Wait on me, my timing is perfect," God spoke to me. 

Then today, I read this:

(Picture from redletterwords.com.  They make and sell home décor from positive sayings and Bible verses!)

Oh that my path would be made straight!  I desperately want clarity as we begin moving into phase two of this process!

This is the life of a waiting parent:  living in the sweetness that is my two sons; living in the bitterness that is longing for an unknown, yet fully loved child.  Mother's day made the balancing act between those two feel more like a tug-of-war.