This is my geranium. It’s been around a long time, pretty much since we moved here. If you know geraniums, you know usually they’re an annual flower, meaning when it gets cold, they die. But apparently as a house plant, in a pot, they can live for years. As you can see, it’s getting kinda long and lanky and not so beautiful these days. The other day I was picking brown leaves off of it and considering the following analogy:
Hope in the adoption process is a little like my geranium.
At times it’s been beautiful, flowering and green and very much alive.
At times it has a lot of brown leaves and looks rather sickly, but even then, buds are present.
Sometimes it’s looked so bad that I’ve cut off all the stems and started from scratch, but I keep the roots around, because I know it will grow again. The roots are alive and healthy enough to sustain the plant to keep growing.
Sometimes, though not right now, this plant has large beautiful blossoms that cause the stems to bend and droop because they’re heavy. The stems fall over but they don’t break.
Are you seeing the analogies?
There are so many ups and downs in this process, it’s crazy. Literally it could drive a person crazy. However, I haven’t gone crazy…well, not yet. You see, I know there is an end to the process and when those little girls are in our arms, all the ups and downs will be worth it, for sure.
And then I remember that my hope is not in circumstances. It’s not in the timing of the adoption, which in my opinion is NEVER too soon. It’s not in grants or financial help from others, though at times the cost of adoption is overwhelming. It’s not in the small victories along the way. “We finished our home study!” “We turned in everything for our dossier!” “We have our LID!” (More on acronyms I’ve learned in my next post.)
No, my hope is a “sure and steadfast anchor for my soul.” My hope is in Jesus. He holds this whole process in His hands and I can trust in Him.
