A Field of Dreams Kind of Adventure

We're riding down the back roads in serious conversation. It seems all of our good talks are in these two seats with the lakes out the windows and the trees flying by. Maybe it's because with all this made by the very hand of God beauty we are compelled to get to the beating heart of our worries and fears. Maybe because with the eagles perched and white caps riding waves we find it ridiculously petty to talk of anything but the important, anything but that which makes our hearts ache for more.

The only sound is the tires hitting the cracks in these forgotten roads. Silence and quiet tears. He offers his hand across the seat and I take it and squeeze as if it is the only thing keeping me from falling into pieces right there and then.

Moments ago I said it. That word that we avoid and skirt about. That word that carries with it so much hope, so much pain, and joy and fear. Fear like we've never known before. Because we can live how we are living now forever. We are surviving. But to look for something more means to risk defeat and disappointment and can we do that to ourselves again?

I said that word knowing full well what it means for us. Breaking down the door and inviting it in, with its power to heal and wound all in the same breath.

My hands held tight together I whispered, "What about adoption?" And he says, "What? I can't hear you." And I laugh because it took me at least 10 minutes to work up enough courage to whisper the words and now I have to speak them louder, maybe shout them??! This man is going to cause a heart attack and he doesn't even know it!

"What...about...adoption?" I say them loud and enunciate. And I can see those words dripping with the honey of hope and poison of defeat moving through the air, across the seat. I can see when they find his ear and in the same moment I see the hope rise up and I see the defeat weigh down on his shoulders.

His answer is the same as it was last year. "Don't have the money." I know he's right. I know it, but I refuse to believe that we are back to this. Money. And we talk and talk and discuss and argue and we're silent. And I just want to believe that there is something more to this fight against defeat. And I hold his hand and know it is the only thing keeping me from falling to pieces.

Isn't it so stupid? Just really stupid that we will trust our eternal souls to our Father yet find we worry over a thousand dollars? Isn't it just so...unbelievable.

Hours later, and I mean, mere hours later, our pastor says this: "The reason you may be financially stuck is because you don't trust God with your money." And I have to catch my breath. He's talking about tithing, that loathsome topic we hate to walk into on a sunny Sunday morning . But really, if we aren't trusting God with our money, because He's the one who has blessed us with it in the first place, how can we really trust him with anything else, or maybe the real question is this: do we truly trust him at all? 

I turn and smile at Jason. That big, toothy smile that says, "Told you so" and he scoffs and puts his arm around me. And I know he is refusing to believe too, that money will stop us.

Pastor Bob is talking about tithing but it speaks to me about adoption. How can we say it will never work if we trust that God will provide? When we say we can't afford it, or it won't work, or we won't be chosen, what we're really saying, if we are being honest, is that we don't trust God to work in it.

And this is just the type of situation that God absolutely loves. His favorite scenario. When the odds are against us, the stakes are high, there is absolutely no way possible. When we're broke and bruised and brought to our knees, we're dead tired and there is nothing more to give, not because we refuse but simply because we cannot. In that moment of human defeat, God can triumph, and often does, and there is no way we can lay claim. He is glorified in the impossible.

I don't know that this is completely accurate but I do feel like I am, right now, living out the plot of Field of Dreams. I hear it whisper late at night. I feel it calling when I'm alone outside. Echoing through the walls of our home. Maybe not an audible sounds but certainly a tug on my soul. "If you build it He will come."

And I am laughing hysterically as I write this but how can I explain it any other way?! If we do the work, if we make the calls, and fill in the blanks on the endless piles of paperwork, if we do all that we can...I believe with everything I have that He will come. He will show up and do something amazing. If we build, He will come.  This is not to say that He will only show up at the end. No, I believe He will be with us throughout everything. But in the end, when we can do no more, when we've cut the corn, and endured the scoffers calls, when we've painted the lines and bought the equipment, when we have built all we can, when we have no more to offer, He will come. Because if he can move mountains, and make blind men see, and heal a bleeding woman with a touch of his shirt, if he can give me eternity and made the very least of everything...if He did all of this, He can move the money. It's only money after all. 

And whatever happens, He is enough for me.