Speaking the Truth in Love

I find myself pondering the various Christian examples I have just witnessed on a show called Trading Spouses. The premise of the show - two families who are rather opposite, swap mothers for a week and at the end of the week each mom decides how $50,000 is spent on her surrogate family.

I have not been so disgusted with another person professing Christ in such a horrifying way in all my life. I watched one woman remain so rigid in her ways that she couldn't see the person as a created being with any value because she was too busy telling them how badly they "need religion" in their lives. (Those were her words.) She couldn't appreciate the person for who they were at all. Granted, we ought to be urgent in sharing Christ with the lost, but to make it so solemn and joyless - so rigid and lifeless of a thing, is it any wonder the person was less than receptive. Had the woman caught in adultery been brought to one of these women, they wouldn't have asked the crowd "the one with no sin be the first to cast a stone". These women would have been the first to pick up the stones and cast them "to set the example". It was horrifying to watch the opportunities to share the love of Christ, to share with these lost and dying people the reality of their desperate need for Him, to show them service and kindness and unconditional love....these women wasted it on rigid religiousness. They had mannerism the Pharisees would have been proud of.

To think that people who watch that show regularly get that kind of impression about Christian broke my heart too. Much of our culture thinks that winsome and Christianity are antonyms and not synonymous with each other at all. When someone welcomed Christ into their home, He wasn't ready to beat down each family member for their lack of faith. He joined them, taught them, ate with them, met them where they were.

Why do we not follow his example? Yes, the religiously proud hypocrites may need rebuking, but we must first ensure the Lord has shaped us to give that rebuke - that our hearts are humble and not proud. Otherwise, the condescension reveals our own wickedness rather clearly. God help us to maintain humility and see others with His sense of compassion and kindness. May we truly speak the truth in love and not just find reason to speak.

Irony

I am really struggling this week with anger, bitterness, an unforgiving heart, pride, and unbelief. All of it points to a huge lack of faith. I know the Lord is shaping my character through our recent trials, but I seem to be a less-then-teachable student in the last few days. I am having such a hard time with communication and it seems every time I stop to think about how to best communicate, I get so angry, I have to start all over and bite my tongue.

In a seeming contradiction to this struggle is a swell of gratitude in my heart for the Lord's presence. I can feel Him almost every bit of every day. His arms hold me so tight sometimes. I pray the hardness of my heart would soften under this touch. Listening to Beautiful Beautiful by Francesca Battistelli makes me think of how undeserving of His grace I really am, and that despite that still - He pours it out over me and I am so overwhelmed with His work in me. How can He be so tender?

OUR ADOPTION STORY

So just this past Friday, our family appeared in court to finalize the adoption of Jonathan. It's now official, Shea is Jonathan's daddy!

This carries so much emotional weight - much of which I didn't expect. We have been working through this process of paperwork, a home study, and waiting for so long, that the sudden arrival of the day gave me very little time to mentally and emotionally process this event before it happened - REALLY happened. But there we were on Friday morning - up at the court house. We were surrounded by a few of our precious friends: Melissa Williams and her three children (Drew, Gabe and baby Abby), Tandi Dawson and her daughter Serenity, and some folks from our church (Chris Norman and Kathy Dickinson). We stood before the judge, testifying what our wishes were and that we felt this was in Jonathan's best interests. Then he affirmed it and it became official - Shea was now Jonathan's dad! Our whole family is now the Wright family. No more blended family or different last names. We were even told we would be issued a new birth certificate that would list Shea as the father! How cool is that! :D

Afterward, the court gave Jonathan a stuffed toy - he picked a little dog. Shea and Jonathan donned their father and son Longhorns hats (embroidered for the occasion). And we snapped pictures! Then we went out to eat. It wasn't the big party we were hoping for, but we had to keep it cheap (that whole job-loss thing is still looming over our finances). But we enjoyed a family meal together and it was great!

As I headed back to work, I thought about something so special to me. God took something ugly and turned it into something beautiful. Part of me is angry that my son's biological father has abandoned him these last few years. Over time, he just quit seeing him. He acted as if being a parent only happens when it's convenient, which - for him - it never was convenient. (Parenting just isn't convenient - not for anyone!) In my heart, I believe the whole termination of rights / adoption thing for him was just about money. His actions were never all that "noble" when it came to Jonathan, so I hardly buy into the notion he really thought about Jonathan and what he needed. If he had thought that way, perhaps he would have been a father who was there instead of always having an excuse for not showing up.

It was ugly. It's just one of those ugly things in life. I made a horrible choice when I had sex outside of marriage. But God turned it into something so beautiful when he gave me my son. We had an ugly situation of a broken home and the whole "blended family" thing, and once again, God turned it into something beautiful when he answered our prayers.

Did I pray for my son's father to abandon him or reject him? Absolutely not! When my heart stirred with grave concern over the fact that if something happened to me, Jonathan's whole life would turn upside down, I began to think about adoption. If I died, Jonathan would not only have lost me, but he would also lose Shea, his home, his school and everything good and familiar to him. He'd be sent to a man who has demonstrated time and time again that Jonathan is too much of an inconvenience to him and his life. Oh how my heart weighed down so heavily at that thought. So Shea and I prayed about whether or not to approach Robert about terminating his rights so Shea could adopt him. Robert had brought it up a year or so before that, but the conversation stopped when I asked him why he wanted to end the relationship with his son. Would it be the right thing to pursue this ourselves?

As we prayed, we really felt no peace about pursuing the legal action. We concluded that we could not pursue shutting the door on this relationship. Whatever happened or didn't happen, we needed to leave it in God's hands and not take it into our own hands. Yet still, I was disturbed by the conflict of impressions on my heart and kept praying for God to help me resolve it. Why the burden to protect my son from the possible upheaval and yet no reasonable way to do so that God seemed to be in favor of? Then came the text message...

Yes, a text message. I received the text from Robert asking about termination and adoption. It opened up a conversation and this time, he wasn't really asking so much as he was telling me that's what he was going to do. He had met with an attorney and offered to pay for the entire process. So he did. He payed for it all - the court costs, the attorney fees, the home study - everything. It made me cry to think that money was so much more important to this man than his son, and that he was really going to sever the relationship forever. But I couldn't change Robert. And in the end, I simply saw this as God's answer to our prayers.

While Jonathan will still have to work through this issue at varying points throughout his lifetime, I know in my heart without a doubt, this was the right thing to do for him. I wonder about how this will affect Jonathan's testimony in life. Shea and I want to adopt other children and I wonder how Jonathan will be able to comfort and identify with those children because of this event. I wonder how God will use this to draw Jonathan to Himself. After all, each of us as believers are adopted by Him. How will God use this in our lives (Shea and me)?

It's amazing to think of the endless possibilities, but alas - we'll just have to wait and see how the story goes. This is our next chapter and we're excited at how the Lord has worked it so far. He really is a God who can make beauty rise from ashes! Thank you Lord for your Sovereignty and Wonderful works! I pray that you'll use this to draw each and every one of us closer to you!

An Exercise of Faith

It's hard to get my thoughts together on the events of the last 24 hours, but if you don't know this about me already - I'm an external processor! Which means, I work through things OUT LOUD. :D

Last night, my husband called me up and gave me the news no wife wants to hear - "I've been let go." I would have to describe my reaction as "shell shock". I sat in silence, bombarded by the millions of thoughts suddenly racing through my mind, not one of them capable of formulating a supportive or encouraging response to my husband. I hung up the phone and began to pray, but my prayers wouldn't come any better than my thoughts. I reached for my phone, thinking one of my closest friends could speak a word to my heart and racing mind that would put me on track. But...none of them answered. So there I was, suddenly suffocating under the weight of my own anxiety and I did the one thing that comes naturally in that type of situation - I burst into tears.

Perhaps you're thinking that I was most concerned about what the checkbook would look like in the upcoming days and weeks, but I was only concerned about who would greet my husband at the door when he finally reached home. The person saturated in tears and panic wanted nothing more than to have a calm, godly reaction to this event and welcome her husband with open arms and a word of confidence and reassurance that he was still "the man"! But no such demeanor or words were coming to fruition.

So I kept praying...I kept telling God that I needed to be the kind of wife that would rush to her husband's side and tackle this thing together with prayer, encouragement and hope not in things seen, but hope in things unseen. I also sent out text messages to every person I could asking them to pray for me. By the time my husband came home, I had finished praying and joined my son in playing a video game in the living room. I was able to greet my husband with some encouragement, but I found that he was more of an encouragement to me. In our conversation, I broke and went from discussing details, to asking him just to reassure me. My Knight came to my side, put his arms around me, looked into my eyes and said, "Shannon, it's going to be okay."

And it will. God is bigger than our checkbook, bigger than our anxieties and our shortcomings. He's going to do something really great in our lives with this. We will be molded and shaped into His likeness in ways we couldn't otherwise have experienced. For that, regardless of financial worries and woes, we will praise Him. We will count our blessings and learn to exercise our faith in new and deeper ways!