Disappointment and Hope

Today I spoke with the director of our adoption agency. (She was very gracious despite the fact that I e-mail or call about every 1.5 weeks!) She encouraged me not to give up, even though all she could hold out as hope to me was a "possibility" - not a "very good possibility" nor even a "probability" - and she admitted that she didn't know whether it would amount to anything or not. She just encouraged me to pray with this "possibility" in mind.

My first reaction was disappointment. Although in my mind I already knew this would be the outcome of the conversation (they would have called if there was something in the works), in my heart I still always hold out hope that somehow I will call them just at the very moment that they are planning to call me to tell me that our baby has been born!

In the midst of my disappointment were the despairing thoughts that there is no way this is ever going to happen, the agency is too small and doesn't handle enough placements for one to come our way in just these few short weeks ... and then I felt convicted about the wrong way I was thinking and the words to an old hymn started playing in my mind:

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.

• Refrain:
  On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
  All other ground is sinking sand,
  All other ground is sinking sand.

When darkness veils His lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.

His oath, His covenant, His blood
Support me in the whelming flood;
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my hope and stay.

When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh, may I then in Him be found;
Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne.

I was reminded that our hope for another child doesn't rest in the hands of this agency, nor did it rest in the hands of the agency from which we withdrew due to our pro-life convictions ... our hope for a child rests solely in the hands of God. If He wants us to have another child, then He will miraculously cause that to happen in the next days or weeks. If He doesn't want us to have another child right now, then no matter how hard any agency works on our behalf it is not going to happen.

And so today I am choosing not to focus on the disappointment but on the hope - and to continue standing on the Rock ...