Stolen Joy

I have said to my husband many times, “I don’t know how people get through anything without Jesus, much less the adoption process.” And I don’t mean an abstract, say a little now I lay me down to sleep prayer. I mean a real love relationship in which you speak to God and He speaks to you. I can not live without Him and I don’t want to.

That was a little bit of a tangent before I start this post 🙂 . Most of us have seen the quote out there that says, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Before we started the adoption process, I allowed my joy to be stolen many times by comparing my life and situation to so many other people. Mainly, pregnancy announcements, bump pictures, birth stories, etc. While social media can be a force for good, it has also been a huge tool for the “thief” to come in and steal.

I realize I had a silly mindset when I started the adoption process. I thought the comparison thing was going to be done with. I had finally come to a place in my heart where I was fully content with where we were in life and how God was leading us into this new adventure. I am a researcher. My husband laughs at me :). If we are taking a trip, I’m on trip advisor checking out the best restaurants, places to visit, where to stay, etc. So when we started the adoption process, it was no different. I find myself living in the domestic adoption and adoption rocks hashtags on Instagram.

I have joined a wonderful community where people are able to share the joys and struggles with others who are in similar situations and there is so much strength in that. However, as I started “meeting” all these new people, that thief started to rear his ugly head one more time. I started to see people who were in the same stage as we are with entire nurseries completed, stocked with clothes, diapers, etc. Where we, on the other hand, don’t have a single piece of furniture in ours. I would see people launching the same exact fundraisers that we’ve done and seemingly having much better results. Their t-shirts are selling much more quickly than ours, their garage sale made triple what ours did, they only have a few puzzle pieces left to sell….and the list could go on and on.

I started to lose sleep. To be anxious. To feel depressed. My mind began to fill with thoughts of, “Should we really be doing this? Can we even afford a baby? What were we thinking? Are we being irresponsible? We are so stupid to think we could do this.” I knew what was happening. I knew I was letting comparison not only rob me of my joy but also my peace. I had taken my eyes off of God and His promises and started looking around at everyone else and the situation in front of me. I was allowing myself to forget how wonderfully God has already been providing, each step of the way, and how He spoke so very clearly to us when we started this process.

I have had to choose joy, hope and faith every day. Some days I literally breathe in God’s peace and exhale worry, fear and anxiety. One thing I know for sure, whether I always feel it or not, is that God is with us. He is with our baby. He is with our birth mom. This is His will. He is and will continue to be faithful. He is writing our story. It won’t look like anyone else’s and it will be perfect. He will provide every single thing our baby needs. He will receive all of the glory from our lives and we look forward in expectation and anticipation of all that He is going to do!