Many days fell away with nothing to show.
And the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love.
Great clouds roll over the hills, bringing darkness from above.
But if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing changed at all?
And if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like you've been here before?
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?
-Bastille, Pompeii
I don't know if I've ever written a post on this blog before. At any rate, if I have written one it was a while ago and I'm too lazy to check.
This is Paul, in case anyone wasn't clear on that.
So, I'd been in a pretty dark place regarding our adoption lately. The endless delays had become increasingly demoralizing, particularly because each 6-month delay notification reinforced our impotence and lack of agency in this whole process. Short of deciding to pull out of our Ethiopian adoption (or using a boatload of cash or celebrity as a bribe, a la Brangelina), there's little Aubrey and I can do to influence this thing.
Now, waiting with no ready answers from God like this, with my trust in his goodness and omnipotence as my main support, isn't something new to me. I wrote a whole post in our old Korean teaching blog detailing the faith journey I went through back when my little brother died. Over the years when Aubrey and I were trying to conceive and having no luck, and later when we were going through the interminably long waiting periods of our adoption, when Aubrey would ask me, Why is God allowing this? We'd be great parents. We see people who are crappy parents in the news all the time. Why do they have kids and we don't? I'd answer with some variety of, "I have no idea. I wonder the same thing. It doesn't seem fair at all, but I'm not God. I don't know the answer, but I know that he does, and that's either enough for us or it's not. We have to trust him."
It's an answer I still believe and I'm still comfortable with. I'd just gotten really fucking tired of repeating it -- to my wife and to myself.
So that's where I was when we got the latest notice of a 6-month delay, followed by a notification that our wait time would likely continue to increase 2 weeks for every month we're waiting (meaning, as I take it, that our wait time will likely end up being half again as long as we think it will be), followed by an announcement that Ethiopia's parliament was considering shutting down all international adoptions, period. (Ethiopia announced last week that it was going to keep its international adoption process open. FYI.)
When I received the email with those announcements, two thoughts went through my mind:
- Oh my God. This just isn't going to happen, is it? We're going to be waiting for years, and it isn't going to happen.
- Man, then fuck this waiting shit. I'm done.
I wasn't aware of thinking this at the time, of course. I felt more disappointment than normal, and I expressed my frustration to Aubrey privately, but what I said to her and to myself was something like, "Alright. This sucks. God's got a plan for this, though. We just need to keep trusting him."
What I didn't realize, though, was that at that very moment I emotionally disengaged from our adoption. I unconsciously began relating to the adoption process the way someone relates to a job he hates but puts up with because it pays the bills. I treated it like something I had to endure, and I couldn't wait for it to end -- not because I was so excited to come home with my child, but because I was tired and just wanted the whole process to be over.
Just end. Just fucking END already (spoken in a weary, disgusted tone) was my attitude. I became so disconnected from my desire to be father that I even began thinking, I hope Ethiopia closes everything down. At least then we'll have closure and this thing will end. The unspoken end to that thought that I wasn't aware of, of course, was "... and then I can stop caring. I can't stand how much this disappointment hurts."
At times like this I'm especially glad to be a part of the education at Landmark. My faith upholds me tremendously, but what do I do when the thoughts and attitudes that are hidden from my view -- the unconscious blind spots that influence everything I think and say and do -- are blocking me from fully experiencing my faith? That's where Landmark goes to work. Reasoning won't do it; how can I reason my way about something when the solution is something my reason can't find? Praying may not do it, because I'll be praying based on the things I already "know," not the blind spots (my hidden and unspoken thoughts, assumptions about life, and attitudes) that really run my life. Maybe God will reach out in his mercy and respond to what I literally have no idea I'm really saying (i.e., the message my blind spots are sending). That's happened before.
In my experience, though, God has generally used what I've learned in Landmark to supplement my Christian faith to get me unstuck at times like this -- not unlike how he uses AA to transform alcoholics' lives (rather than miraculously intervening in every alcoholic's life to cure him of his diseased thoughts and attitudes) -- allowing me to experience his grace and power in my life in a new and amazing way. And I really needed to be unstuck.
In conversations with Aubrey (who has also taken Landmark courses and trainings, so we have a common frame of reference, which helps a ton) and with other Landmark graduates at a training a couple weeks ago, I saw how massively resigned I had become to the possibility of being a father. It was completely inauthentic. I was relating to fatherhood in a really blasé way -- "It would be great if it happens, but if it doesn't, it doesn't." Like I'd be okay with not being a dad. That unspoken attitude, I'm okay with not being a dad, covered up that I'm absolutely NOT okay with not being dad.
But, I figured, if I armored myself in resignation and flippancy, then disappointment couldn't hurt me. Hope is a necessary precondition for disappointment, and desire for something is a precondition for hope. No desire = no hope = no disappointment. QED. I think, pre-Landmark I would have come to this realization only after months of therapy, discussions, and fights with my wife. Instead, it took about 18 hours of conversation and reflection. Done and done.
By the afternoon of the day after I talked with Aubrey, revealing my thoughts and feelings on our adoption for the first time, I'd come to see how untenable my attitudes were. I couldn't have that kind of resignation in any area of my life -- certainly not an area as important as creating a family -- and expect that it wouldn't infect the rest of my life. And, when I took an honest look at my life, I saw that it had. My attitude at work had gradually eroded as the question silently running my life from the background, Why try? What good will it do? sapped me of enthusiasm for my job.
Now, I raise money for an organization that literally makes the difference between life and death for some men, an organization dedicated to seeing that men whom society looks down on and often despises are reminded of how much God loves them and empowered to transform their lives. My job is to ensure that the organization is actually able to do these things. My job is redonkulous. It's amazing and inspiring. It's the kind of job that 60% of Americans would kill to have (if the stats on how much people hate their jobs are correct). And I was resigned. Eh, whatever. Nothing I'm doing is making a difference. Or something.
I really care about being a father. Aubrey and I are involved in a process to make that happen, a process that's taking A LOT longer than I thought it would when we started. That's just what's so. Somewhere along the way, I began acting like the second sentence had anything to do with whether the first sentence is true. That confusion created a malaise of resignation that covered my whole life for a couple months. I'm happy to say that that confusion has been disappeared. What's left is the hope and trust that was there before.
And the waiting. That's still there, too. And, barring a real miracle, it will be there for at least another year.
I won't pretend that I like this waiting, or that I'm happy about it, or that I want anything to do with it, actually. But I will accept that what I have is perfect, and exactly what I need right now. Even though it sucks. God never promised that his grace would make life's circumstances disappear. He said that his grace would be sufficient for me. And it is.
What I didn't realize, though, was that at that very moment I emotionally disengaged from our adoption. I unconsciously began relating to the adoption process the way someone relates to a job he hates but puts up with because it pays the bills. I treated it like something I had to endure, and I couldn't wait for it to end -- not because I was so excited to come home with my child, but because I was tired and just wanted the whole process to be over.
Just end. Just fucking END already (spoken in a weary, disgusted tone) was my attitude. I became so disconnected from my desire to be father that I even began thinking, I hope Ethiopia closes everything down. At least then we'll have closure and this thing will end. The unspoken end to that thought that I wasn't aware of, of course, was "... and then I can stop caring. I can't stand how much this disappointment hurts."
At times like this I'm especially glad to be a part of the education at Landmark. My faith upholds me tremendously, but what do I do when the thoughts and attitudes that are hidden from my view -- the unconscious blind spots that influence everything I think and say and do -- are blocking me from fully experiencing my faith? That's where Landmark goes to work. Reasoning won't do it; how can I reason my way about something when the solution is something my reason can't find? Praying may not do it, because I'll be praying based on the things I already "know," not the blind spots (my hidden and unspoken thoughts, assumptions about life, and attitudes) that really run my life. Maybe God will reach out in his mercy and respond to what I literally have no idea I'm really saying (i.e., the message my blind spots are sending). That's happened before.
In my experience, though, God has generally used what I've learned in Landmark to supplement my Christian faith to get me unstuck at times like this -- not unlike how he uses AA to transform alcoholics' lives (rather than miraculously intervening in every alcoholic's life to cure him of his diseased thoughts and attitudes) -- allowing me to experience his grace and power in my life in a new and amazing way. And I really needed to be unstuck.
In conversations with Aubrey (who has also taken Landmark courses and trainings, so we have a common frame of reference, which helps a ton) and with other Landmark graduates at a training a couple weeks ago, I saw how massively resigned I had become to the possibility of being a father. It was completely inauthentic. I was relating to fatherhood in a really blasé way -- "It would be great if it happens, but if it doesn't, it doesn't." Like I'd be okay with not being a dad. That unspoken attitude, I'm okay with not being a dad, covered up that I'm absolutely NOT okay with not being dad.
But, I figured, if I armored myself in resignation and flippancy, then disappointment couldn't hurt me. Hope is a necessary precondition for disappointment, and desire for something is a precondition for hope. No desire = no hope = no disappointment. QED. I think, pre-Landmark I would have come to this realization only after months of therapy, discussions, and fights with my wife. Instead, it took about 18 hours of conversation and reflection. Done and done.
By the afternoon of the day after I talked with Aubrey, revealing my thoughts and feelings on our adoption for the first time, I'd come to see how untenable my attitudes were. I couldn't have that kind of resignation in any area of my life -- certainly not an area as important as creating a family -- and expect that it wouldn't infect the rest of my life. And, when I took an honest look at my life, I saw that it had. My attitude at work had gradually eroded as the question silently running my life from the background, Why try? What good will it do? sapped me of enthusiasm for my job.
Now, I raise money for an organization that literally makes the difference between life and death for some men, an organization dedicated to seeing that men whom society looks down on and often despises are reminded of how much God loves them and empowered to transform their lives. My job is to ensure that the organization is actually able to do these things. My job is redonkulous. It's amazing and inspiring. It's the kind of job that 60% of Americans would kill to have (if the stats on how much people hate their jobs are correct). And I was resigned. Eh, whatever. Nothing I'm doing is making a difference. Or something.
I really care about being a father. Aubrey and I are involved in a process to make that happen, a process that's taking A LOT longer than I thought it would when we started. That's just what's so. Somewhere along the way, I began acting like the second sentence had anything to do with whether the first sentence is true. That confusion created a malaise of resignation that covered my whole life for a couple months. I'm happy to say that that confusion has been disappeared. What's left is the hope and trust that was there before.
And the waiting. That's still there, too. And, barring a real miracle, it will be there for at least another year.
I won't pretend that I like this waiting, or that I'm happy about it, or that I want anything to do with it, actually. But I will accept that what I have is perfect, and exactly what I need right now. Even though it sucks. God never promised that his grace would make life's circumstances disappear. He said that his grace would be sufficient for me. And it is.
