I Am...Beyond Labels

I'm in D.C. this week teaching 1000 middle schoolers about who God says they are:

What God says about you is the most important and truest thing about you.

Honestly, I still regularly struggle with this truth. A lot of times I define myself by what I do or what others say about me, not what God says about me. I am a wife. I am a daughter. I am a friend. I am a pastor. I am a mama-in-waiting. I am a girly girl. But those are really roles I play or things I do - it's not who I am.

For many months after my infertility diagnosis, I struggled to let diagnosis that define me:

I am the infertile one. I am a woman with PCOS. I am unable to get pregnant. I am broken at the core of my womanhood. I am less than other women.

Identifying those false messages was a huge part of my grieving process. Become aware of those lies ultimately led to the acceptance of my diagnosis, but not accepting those words as my identity.

Yes, I have PCOS. No, I am not the infertile one. I am loved beyond measure by God of the Universe. I am a new life. I am worth far more than my ability to conceive a child. I am being restored day by day to be more of who I was created to be. I am chosen by God for a divine purpose to change the world. I am created very good. I am an inheritor of everything that is Christ's. That's the truth about me.

And it's the truth about you. I pray that you & I would see ourselves beyond the labels that we place on ourselves or that others place on us. I pray those labels - true or false - would not become our identity, but they would be used redemptively by God. I pray that God's voice we would be clearer and stronger than any other voice. I pray God's labels would be the strongest of all.

And I pray that these middle schoolers at DCLA would "get this" early on in their lives...what different lives they could live!

Hurry Up...and Wait

If there's any phrase that defines the adoption process, "hurry up and wait" does. For the first part of the process - "paperwork hell" as I've affectionately coined it - is the hurry up part. It's the time when you're building inches high amounts of paperwork from every known government agency proving you are who you say you are, that you'll be fit parents, that Brian and I actually really love each other. This is the fun part.

The not fun part is waiting. Waiting for people to approve all the said paperwork and matching you to a child. After we send our dossier to Ethiopia, the full-on waiting game begins. At that point it could be up to 6 months before we get our referral. And there's not much that we can do about that!

I'm a little snarky, but it's actually a great metaphor for life. At times there's much to do and it hardly feels like you see the end of the tunnel. At other times you're waiting on people, God, or circumstances to change. So it really should come as no surprise that the adoption process isn't any different.

I've actually come to a place where I'm enjoying the waiting. Perhaps because the past 2 years has been a waiting game, and I've been so deeply, profoundly changed by waiting. I had an epiphany a few weeks ago that Brian and I are in the final days of "just the two of us". So I'm really trying to enjoy these days. We are overwhelmingly excited to be parents, but our marriage will never be the same. I'm enjoying the green grass on this side of the fence for today!

Butterflies

I have a dear friend, Tracy, who's terrified of butterflies. Terrified of them like I'm terrified of snakes. But I've fallen in love with butterflies. It started over a year ago when my infertility journey started really tearing my heart out. Another close friend, Jeanne, told me, "I think it's time for you to read When the Heart Waits." I knew it was time.

For the next 6-8 months I painstakingly, slowly, and tearfully read through each chapter. First chapter 1. Then, a few weeks later, chapters 1 and 2. Then, a month later, chapters 1-3. And so on. I got caught on a few chapters. But every time I opened my book in my bed or at Laguna Beach, God spoke. He was transforming my bleeding heart and healing it.

The image the author, Sue Monk Kidd, used in her book is that of a butterfly. It's is the cocooning process that a caterpillar endures in order to become a butterfly. It involves a dark, waiting process. It involves a confined, painful place. It involved surrendering the previous form to become the new form. It involves change on every level for that caterpillar.

Over the past year, I have been like that caterpillar. Never have I waited so intensely for a dream. Never have I experienced such deep - to the core of my being - pain. Never have I felt change occurring on every level of my being. A lot of times I've wanted to just hide out in my cocoon and stop the process. Transformation is hard, painful work.

Brian bought me a gorgeous, diamond butterfly necklace for my 29th birthday. I almost never take it off. To me, it is a constant reminder of this soul metamorphosis. To me, it's a visual of God's unwavering goodness, tenderness, and gentleness in my pain. To me, it's a picture of the beauty that's emerging from my darkest days.

Butterflies are amazing creatures. They have taught me more this year than I ever thought I'd learn from them. I'm learning how to fly.