Refuel Your Wait. Laci Richter
ultrasounds and blood work. My husband and I decided that I would take a sabbatical from work while building our family. We did not expect the process of building our family to take three years. During this time, I felt societal pressure to find a job, but I also felt stronger prompts keeping me home.
My time off was intended to be focused on organizing my home and preparing for a child. This preparation time turned into a trying time of failed fertility treatments and several interrupted adoptions. Unexpectedly, that waiting time resulted in a space in which I was searching and developing a personal relationship with God. We quickly found a church that we were comfortable in and we began building a church family. I found God bringing many relationships to me with people of abundant faith and hearts of service. Quiet moments felt uncomfortable and a waste of time, but soon enough my idle time turned into space to think, pray, and write.
Our Heavenly Father rejoices in our dependence on him. The days when we throw our hands in the air and proclaim, “Help me Lord” are music to his ears. He wants us to depend on him, search for him, and yes, wait for him.
Wait with Hope
How often do you make or take time to wait quietly?
What “time wasters” could you eliminate to make space in your day to wait quietly?
Commit to a week with daily quiet time and journal your thoughts.
Chapter Five
Joyful Source
“I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.”
(Romans 15:13)
The year that my husband and I decided to seek fertility treatment was the same year we decided to relocate our lives. We were living in a city across the country from our families’. We felt the need to be closer to family and closer to the places where we grew up as we thought about raising children. My husband’s company had a convenient location near our family with a job opportunity available for him. After moving across the country and finding a specialist to work with, we immediately started fertility treatments. After one year of unsuccessful fertility treatments, we moved forward to the adoption process. During these years, I remained unemployed for various reasons which left me with abundant time for projects and daydreaming of our future family.
After one year stretched into two, I decided it might be better to spend my time doing more than planning a baby nursery and daydreaming of a family. Through our church, I randomly fell into a volunteer position for a nonprofit kitchen that provided meals to the working poor and homeless. With very little industrial kitchen experience or experience with the homeless–this was out of my comfort zone.
While volunteering on a regular basis, I met a group of people whose source of joy was surely that of the Lord. Regardless of the task they had been given, whether it was mopping the floor or serving food, they did the task with complete joy. From the nonprofit leader to the kitchen managers to the servers, every one of them presented with a mysterious shining light. After a few weeks, I was given a consistent task of rolling out the pizza dough for the lunch menu. For two to three hours at a time, I would stand in the same spot and roll out 40 pizzas. It was the most meditative, joyful, fulfilling hours of my week. The people we were serving usually walked in looking defeated yet left in an entirely different light. The meals were about so much more than providing food to those in need. The meals provided nourishment of the spirit and the soul.
God is our source of hope, our source of wisdom, our source of love. The more we trust in him, the more he provides. When we surround ourselves with those who have accepted him as their nourishment, we are then filled with their light. That nourishment, that light that you receive, will then radiate joy and peace towards others.
Wait with Hope
Can you think of a person or a group of people who exude confident hope and joy in their daily actions?
Do you recognize their source of joy as their relationship with God or some other source?
Are there times when you feel drawn to them and other times when you feel the need to avoid them?
Can you think of a place or event that you can find people who radiate this source?
Can you think of daily actions that can bring you closer to people with this source?
Chapter Six
Baby Steps
“We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.”
(Proverbs 16:9)
My husband and I are not high school sweethearts and didn’t live in the same state during college. We met when we were twenty-eight and well into the adulthood of finding a permanent job, a better place to live, and mature friends. We enjoyed our dating stage into our newlywed stage and before we knew it, we were thirty-years-old. Now, we were ready to start a family and parent together.
After trying to conceive on our own for a year, we sought help from a doctor. We found a specialist and began the rigorous and exhausting attempt of conceiving through medical intervention and fertility treatments.
At the beginning of each cycle, I would calculate the expected due date of the baby were that fertility treatment to be successful. Then, I would continue on to prepare plans for the future. I would daydream about exactly how we would tell our family the exciting news. I would get wrapped up in decor, colors, and furniture shopping for the nursery. And I would think through what daily life as a stay-at-home mom, with a precious newborn, would look like. These vivid daydreams consumed my thoughts. Every negative pregnancy test consumed my joy.
I planned for a baby and my Heavenly Father did too; however, our steps and our timeline were not the same. My actions, daydreams, joy, and grief would have changed dramatically had I known it would take four years before my timeline and my Heavenly Father’s timeline aligned.
We will have plans and timelines for our lives. But if we seek God for direction of the next steps, then our plans will align, making a more peaceful journey along the way. Disappointments and failures will be on our path, so growing deeper in our relationship with God will help us acknowledge that it is he who determines the ultimate timeline.
Wait with Hope
List one short-term or long-term goal that you are trying to accomplish.
What is your plan and timeline for getting there?
Take one step at a time and prayerfully consult your Heavenly Father on the next step. Do you feel peace? Then keep going. Do you feel a closed door? Reconsider other options and steps.
Chapter Seven
Path of Least Control
“Show me the right path, O Lord; point out the road for me to follow. Lead me; by your trust and teach me, for you are the God who saves me. All day long I put my hope in you.”
(Psalm 25:4–5)
The hardest part for me when we hit this “infertility bump in the road” was that I had absolutely no control over the issue. I tried to take control by eating the things I should, taking the supplements suggested, and seeking medical treatment, but none of this worked. When we left the fertility efforts behind and started our adoption journey, I felt relief in knowing this process was something more in my control; or so I thought.
When we started the adoption process, I wanted to proceed with the easiest and shortest route. I read all the books and planned our course of action. We signed up with an adoption agency for support and education while we simultaneously worked with adoption lawyers to cover all our bases and quickly get our profile to expectant mothers. Each time an opportunity came our way, I would try to take it, make it mine, and make it work.
Multiple times we faced