Mountain Release

My husband and I decided to take a few days away, just the two of us. There’s this great B&B up in the mountains of Highland County, VA owned by my colleague’s parents and recommended by friends. The views are breathtaking, the coffee flows, the owners are kind, the food is fantastic, the rooms are without televisions and it’s impossible not to rest. Anything you do involves fantastic scenery. Above all, it’s quiet. Deafeningly quiet.


With the quiet comes a slowing down. It’s not easy for me to slow down, to really let my brain stop. Sometimes my brain feels so busy that I can’t even pinpoint what it’s actually busy doing. When I hit that point, I know it’s not a good sign. And as we’ve started along this adoption process, I’m noticing my brain tending in that direction again, tending towards chaos. Keeping track of paperwork, wondering, waiting, waiting, waiting. Did I mention waiting? Trying not to be frustrated when someone takes two months to fill out one tiny little piece of paperwork and then when it is finally sent it you find out from the agency that it was done wrong and has to be redone. How many more months, my brain wonders?

It all comes down to a lack of control. I can’t make someone prioritize our adoption- to many people, it is just another piece of paperwork. To us, it’s a child and every minute that goes by is another minute in our lives without that little person in our family. Another prayer time at night where my 4 year old quietly begs god for a sibling and starts to, finally, hint at being impatient with this whole process and asks tougher questions. Why do some of his friends have multiple siblings and he gets none? Doesn’t God hear our prayers?

So, being here, being away, not checking email, not being able to know if, finally, this one person has gotten her part done has actually been a good break. As I type this I am gazing out the window of our room on a gorgeous pink and purple sunset over the blue and hazy mountains. I am reminded that no matter how much I enjoy the perception of control, it’s all an illusion, anyway. I can’t really control anything. I can’t control our adoption process, my fertility, the bee that just stung my poor husband in the neck. None of it.

This past Sunday our pastor preached another sermon in a series on discernment and decision-making. One of his points was that when we are waiting for something our prayer needs to not be that that thing would come or happen, but that we would be content, patient and faithful as we wait and learn to trust God’s heart. And as I’ve thought about that I’ve had to be reminded anew that I need to pray that I would know that there is purpose in the waiting – not that God is maliciously sitting up in heaven and chuckling as he decides how many months or years to make us wait for something but that in any waiting I can choose to listen and learn or I can choose to grumble and yearn. Pure and simple.

So, with mountain breezes here hinting at fall, with no phone ringing or child chattering, I am enjoying at least a few moments of sweet quiet, of just trying to wait and be content, of not checking email every hour or two to see if the agency has approved us. I am slowing down and it is everything I dreamed it could be.