Our youngest son, Ethan, and his wife, Alyssa, just adopted a beautiful little baby girl. My wife and I happened to be visiting them when they received the long-awaited call saying that if they could book a flight that day, they could be holding their newborn baby daughter that evening.
A few hours later we were driving them to the airport, even as they continued to make phone calls from the back seat, extracting themselves from their busy lives for a few days. We dropped them off with hugs, retrieved their golden retriever to bring home with us, and waited for their call. Amazingly, a few hours later on a video call, we met our new granddaughter, Adeline.
As quick and miraculous as that day now seems, it followed a long and difficult journey. Those young parents had been through months of longing, preparation, scrutiny, expense, waiting, and multiple disappointments. One mother selected them to parent the baby she was expecting, then after several weeks withdrew and disappeared. Another included them in the birth and allowed them to hold the baby in the hospital before changing her mind and deciding to keep the child.
You are able to look back at all the stumbling blocks, even the ones that felt like stone walls at the time, and see only a lovingly constructed pathway of steppingstones.
Pregnancy and childbirth are certainly difficult processes in the journey of parenting. For many, adoption can be a difficult journey too.
A few days after Adeline arrived, I was invited by IBSA’s Scott Foshie to meet with a group of “Pathfinders,” leaders who are trained to help our network coach pastors and consult with churches in revitalization processes. Scott introduced my time with the group by asking if I had any thoughts to share about the importance of resilience.
Though he was asking about the resilience needed by pastors and leaders to stay committed to a church revitalization process over time, my mind went immediately to our kids’ adoption journey. I recounted to the Pathfinders the multiple stumbling blocks that Ethan and Alyssa experienced over many months, and how devastating and demoralizing each one felt.
Sometimes those stumbling blocks seemed more like stone walls, but for the joy of parenting that was set before them they crawled over those walls or walked to the right or left until they found a way around them. Giving up was not an option. Forward progress toward the faith-fueled dream was always the choice. That requires resilience. Trusting any long but worthwhile process always does.
The same is true with church revitalization. As supportive family members, pathfinders if you will, we were often needed to offer empathy during the painful, sometimes devastating disappointments. At the same time, we needed to gently encourage and remind our loved ones on the journey that if your heart is set on the end goal, and if you are trusting God by faith for his eventual provision, then every stumbling block can also be seen as a steppingstone along a path that God’s providence is revealing, one step at a time.
If you love a child that you don’t know yet, you stay resilient. If you love a church that isn’t where it once was, or isn’t where it needs to be yet, you stay resilient. Your faith and your Bible tell you that there will be a day when it is all worthwhile.
And on that day, the Lord allows this wonderful thing to happen. You are able to look back at all the stumbling blocks, even the ones that felt like stone walls at the time, and see only a lovingly constructed pathway of steppingstones. It’s a path that you now see led you to God’s very best for you, for your family, or for your church, because you followed him there.
Nate Adams is executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association. Respond at IllinoisBaptist@IBSA.org.