exploring oceans

an ocean to explore....

in our western culture, we think everything's linear - life is a series of sequential events, people grow in developmental stages, and we conquer things w/in measurable parameters. sometimes this is true. sometimes things are linear. but not everything. and maybe not even most things. my current delving into the recesses of my heart and riley's adoption isn't linear. i think i try to make it linear, formulaic. it seems easier to me when struggles are perceived as equations....when i treat life like a marathon, tallyin mile markers along the way. 'seems' is the operative word here....

over and over again, i'm reminded that learnin to be a follower of Christ, a wife, a mother, a friend aren't one-dimensional objectives....they're experiences full of color and mess, beauty and sorrow, struggle and redemption. life and Life in The Lord are oceans to be explored....

one of the driving forces behind my current pursuit into adoptive mothering is a....what?...a sense? a wondering? a beckoning, even? i don't have the right word....but it's like there's a part of me that knows there's somethin else about this adoption thing that i'm not gettin. that the frustration and grief and confusion i'm carryin can't only be evidence of what i don't have, of what i can't do, of who i can't be....but evidence of what is offered. it's like....it's like bein hungry. when you're hungry, your hunger pangs and thoughts of food aren't only evidence of your lack of food....not only evidence of your desire for food....but also evidence that there is somethin out there that promises to satisfy.

these questions i'm wrestlin w/about adoption and riley and bein the kind of mother i dream of bein....i don't think they're just about the next 50 years of my life....i think they're drawin me to The Lord...maybe in ways i wouldn't know if i was able to conceive and carry our "natural" children.

i think there's somethin more to this than meets the eye.