People who know me might say that I can be a bit of a
control freak. I do like to have things in order. I make lists. I plan ahead. I
put everything on my calendar. I do things best on a schedule and a timeline.
And I like to know all of my options so I can make the best choices.
But what I am working on right now is letting go. Not
letting go in a way that brings chaos into my life, but rather letting go in a
way that brings peace because I have handed things over to God.
I decided that there might be something to this whole idea
of letting go when it suddenly hit me that the greatest blessing in my life
came from a giant act of letting go. That blessing is my beautiful 18-month-old
daughter. The letting go happened in the 21 months that we spent waiting to
adopt her.
The beginning of the adoption process was made for someone
like me. We had a long list of things to accomplish. I got to make a schedule
and check things off my list. I enjoyed being in control of what I needed to do
and regularly feeling like we were making progress. But once we got to the end
of that long list of background checks, reference letters, scrapbooks, and
personal essays, we entered the next phase of the process–the waiting period.
It was during this time that I had to learn to let go. You see, I had no
control over how long we would wait, nor did we even have any idea of how long
that wait would be. There was nothing I
could do.
Those are not easy words for me to think. Except that there
was one thing I could do–and did do: pray regularly. By telling God that I
trusted Him to bring us the baby we were meant to have, I was able to often
feel a great peace in my heart. And by telling God that I trusted His timing, I
gave myself permission to not obsess quite so much over when it might happen. I
cannot say that the wait was easy in any way, but I can say that letting go
made it possible for me to make it through all those months.
What are some situations in your life that need to be handed over to God?
Pictured are Robert, Greta and Stephanie Vanderford.
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