Laying claim

Over the weekend I was listening to some conference talks on my little mp3 player while folding laundry. This is good because then you can ignore all the kids' mundane requests for things they can really do themselves, like bringing them a blanket while their butts grow into the mattress where they are lying playing Lego Star Wars. And you can get a lot more done and just be like, "Oh, I didn't hear you."

Anyway I heard this talk. About claiming God's promises in your life. It moved me very deeply.

(I was standing at the kitchen counter weeping in a "Together Forever" crying-over-the-sliced-tomatoes kind of pose. Except I think what I was doing was making Ovaltine for K, because he is cocoa-loco and also very loud, loud enough to be heard over the mp3 player.)

Maybe it was so emotional for me because it touched on the pain of wanting but not having children. That is a pain that will always be close to my heart, even though I now think I have all the children I want.

But I think the talk was about a lot more than the promise of children. That was just one example.

We are at a place now where we are just on the verge of the fulfillment of a lot of things. The completion of G's education. Maybe a job. The adoption of our last (I think) two kids. I want these things to be promises fulfilled. I want to deserve them.

I think in some ways we do deserve them. Let's face it, we have worked our butts off for the last 15 years trying to get educated and adopt our kids. We have earned what we are maybe about to get, which is a great job that G can never lose (professors may not make a lot, but the job security pretty much can't be beat) and a completed family, final and forever, sealed in the temple and in God's eyes as if they were born to us.

But when it gets this close you also see that it's really all out of your control. Nobody has to give G a job. Nobody has to give us these kids.

And in a lot of ways we don't deserve the very best. I am still too prideful to give a public account of all my flaws and mistakes and sins, but I sure know what they are. And in bad moments I wonder how anyone could possibly really trust me with these kids, and whether I have been supportive enough to get G through this program in time to take a job this fall, and if it's really possible that three unbelievably, life-changingly good things could happen to us in one week, two weeks from now.

That's when we have two scheduled TPR hearings (March 11 and 13) and there is also a hiring committee meeting that will supposedly make a decision about the job G interviewed for this week (March 10).

But when I heard this, I think I knew:

"I pray that each of us will embrace these exceeding great and precious promises and never let go. And just as God remembered Rachel, God will remember you."

I don't know the future. But I know that's true, God will remember me, and G, and all these crazy little kids playing Wii for 12 hours straight and begging for cocoa and pulling all the books off the bookshelves.

I get so nervous, the last few weeks, and I know that's going to continue to plague me until things are settled. But I also know I have tried my best, at least most of the time, and I'm truly sorry for the times when I haven't, and I know I can trust the Lord.