Sustained With Joy
There's an energy drink provider's commercial that sticks with me these days. A parent of a newborn serves by night. An office assistant perseveres who hasn't had a day off in recent memory. If the settings and the dialogue didn't clue us into the fact that these people needed a boost, there's an icon above their heads familiar to nearly every 21st-century American. It's a cell phone battery representing the individual's energy supply, and it is predictably low.
I'm not sure our energy and positivity can be registered on a single gauge. Recent changes have charged mine to 100% on some fronts, but adoption optimism has been flagging. My wife and I have been on the infertility/adoption journey for many years without an occupied crib. Recently, she has been following a startup consulting service on social media begun with promising results, and she encouraged me in her wifely way to join her for a conference call. I did, mostly. The perky voice on the other end of the call asked how we came to this point, and I was forthright. We have been doing this for years. Birthmothers have told us we are too old, that they don't picture adoptive fathers with my disability, and that they would rather their babies not be raised as only children. If I didn't bluntly ask what this consulting service could do about those factors to earn their considerable fee on top of adoption costs, I came close.
The voice was undeterred, even seem to gain charge from the outlay. I'm inspired by your journey, the voice's owner said. Inspired? I'm not very inspired by this journey at this juncture, how can someone else be inspired? Not only was the proprietor of Mustard Seed Adoption Consulting inspired, but she lived out that inspiration with an offer to yoke her services with our efforts on terms that left no doubt this was more than glib sales technique. Hers were the fresh eyes which saw perseverance where I had grown accustomed to it, perhaps overlooked it to focus on a certain staleness. Not only that, as my mood was improved by seeing the positives someone else saw in our ongoing search, she found the funny in my offer to overcome difficulties in being fingerprinted by pressure-sensitive machinery from a wheelchair by being arrested in some ill-conceived scheme in order to necessitate law enforcement finding a way to fingerprinted me. It's been a while since someone called me silly.
With something of a renewed tailwind behind us, we got another chance to see what others see and what to us can become an efforts to put one foot in front of the other. A reference for yet another grant was more than perfunctory. It was an infusion from a mom who successfully adopted. She also saw more than ground perseverance. She saw and highlighted the same sense of humor and approachability in this prospective adoptive father that can be easy for me to overlook, easy for me to discount as part of the reason we have been passed over. In risking rejection, in asking for help, we heard from human phrasing something of how God STILL sees us.
The checkpoints of encouragement are vital. Grim resolution can only get us so far. Psalm 119:92 seconds this confession, with the psalmist admitting to the Lord, "If your instructions had SUSTAINED ME WITH JOY (my emphasis), I would have died in my misery." Ours is to undertake when our batteries of optimism are low. Ours is to open ourselves up to risk and hurt, again, but also to the very real possibility that we may find more encouragement along the way that was in our reserves to start with. Ours is to accustom ourselves to joy, again, even when our internal dialogue of expectation has lowered to protect us from all possible disappointment. Especially as we endeavor to parent or disciple others as God parents and disciples us, ours is to seek in every sunrise, in every letter, in every stolen moment in the Scripture and exchange of our worn-over mindset for His renewed one.
I'm not sure our energy and positivity can be registered on a single gauge. Recent changes have charged mine to 100% on some fronts, but adoption optimism has been flagging. My wife and I have been on the infertility/adoption journey for many years without an occupied crib. Recently, she has been following a startup consulting service on social media begun with promising results, and she encouraged me in her wifely way to join her for a conference call. I did, mostly. The perky voice on the other end of the call asked how we came to this point, and I was forthright. We have been doing this for years. Birthmothers have told us we are too old, that they don't picture adoptive fathers with my disability, and that they would rather their babies not be raised as only children. If I didn't bluntly ask what this consulting service could do about those factors to earn their considerable fee on top of adoption costs, I came close.
The voice was undeterred, even seem to gain charge from the outlay. I'm inspired by your journey, the voice's owner said. Inspired? I'm not very inspired by this journey at this juncture, how can someone else be inspired? Not only was the proprietor of Mustard Seed Adoption Consulting inspired, but she lived out that inspiration with an offer to yoke her services with our efforts on terms that left no doubt this was more than glib sales technique. Hers were the fresh eyes which saw perseverance where I had grown accustomed to it, perhaps overlooked it to focus on a certain staleness. Not only that, as my mood was improved by seeing the positives someone else saw in our ongoing search, she found the funny in my offer to overcome difficulties in being fingerprinted by pressure-sensitive machinery from a wheelchair by being arrested in some ill-conceived scheme in order to necessitate law enforcement finding a way to fingerprinted me. It's been a while since someone called me silly.
With something of a renewed tailwind behind us, we got another chance to see what others see and what to us can become an efforts to put one foot in front of the other. A reference for yet another grant was more than perfunctory. It was an infusion from a mom who successfully adopted. She also saw more than ground perseverance. She saw and highlighted the same sense of humor and approachability in this prospective adoptive father that can be easy for me to overlook, easy for me to discount as part of the reason we have been passed over. In risking rejection, in asking for help, we heard from human phrasing something of how God STILL sees us.
The checkpoints of encouragement are vital. Grim resolution can only get us so far. Psalm 119:92 seconds this confession, with the psalmist admitting to the Lord, "If your instructions had SUSTAINED ME WITH JOY (my emphasis), I would have died in my misery." Ours is to undertake when our batteries of optimism are low. Ours is to open ourselves up to risk and hurt, again, but also to the very real possibility that we may find more encouragement along the way that was in our reserves to start with. Ours is to accustom ourselves to joy, again, even when our internal dialogue of expectation has lowered to protect us from all possible disappointment. Especially as we endeavor to parent or disciple others as God parents and disciples us, ours is to seek in every sunrise, in every letter, in every stolen moment in the Scripture and exchange of our worn-over mindset for His renewed one.
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