Restless

When I graduated from high school, my dad and step mom gave me a very popular graduation book called Oh the Places You'll Go! By Dr. Seuss. Maybe you've read it, maybe you haven't, but it's a book that the boys and I enjoy reading on a regular basis.

It's a great representation of life and the choices we make; from the times we are soaring high and everything seems to come easily, to the times when we are stumbling through the darkness, unsure of what lays before us.

While contemplating this strange place that life has me in right now, I couldn't help but be reminded of a similar place in the book called The Waiting Place. Here's an excerpt.

...You can get so confused
that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place...

...for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.

What a testimony to our life right now. Adam and I have spent the last 15 months waiting for that one, all important phone call, telling us that a little girl has been picked for our family. It's as though our lives hang in limbo for that very moment, because once it happens, we will finally be able move forward. With that phone call, she will no longer be stranger, but a little girl with a name and a face.

Until then though, we must wait.

The past few weeks of waiting have been especially hard, and I have been fighting feelings of restlessness. I want to be done. I'm tired of living in limbo, not knowing if we will receive that phone call next week, next month or two months from now. And today, after a series of frustrating events, I slumped into the chair at my computer desk, and said to God, "I am restless. I'm tired of waiting. Give me an idea of how much longer we must wait. But please, don't wait until next week to give me an answer, I need to know today."

And then a few seconds later, I noticed the book Simpler Living Compassionate Life crammed into my bookshelf, and as I turned to the bookmarked page, my eyes fell on the following quote:

You have made us to be toward Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until we rest in You.
-Augustine of Hippo

To be quite honest, I was hoping to hear the phone ring as soon as I said that prayer. But God, in His infinite wisdom, knew that it would not have helped me to be given dates or times, because this adoption journey doesn't end when we bring our daughter home. It is the beginning of a lifelong commitment to follow Him when we can't see our own way. To trust Him when we become fearful, and to rest in Him when we become weary.

And if he achieves that objective by using the words from a 4th century bishop, then I will rest in that.