Faith As A Crutch

Good morning! I was happy to see this thread this morning. My husband and I were just talking last night about this situation. We are very strong catholics, I put total faith in God and know that he has blessed me in more ways than I can ever imagine, my husband being the biggest of these blessings. However, lately I feel so guilty b/c I feel like I've prayed for a baby for 4 1/2 years + (through trying, infertility treatments, and now adoption) and I keep thinking why isn't this happenning, we're good people.. how come God isn't giving us a baby but all kinds of people who don't deserve to have one,like the 15 some teens in our high school, do have them. Yet I know in my heart God is finding us the perfect blessing. How do you deal with all of these feelings? Like I said, I 100% believe in and put my life in God's hands, that is why it is so disturbing to me to be feeling like this.

You posted this a while back now ... I was just wondering if you're still waiting. God answers every prayer one of three ways: "Yes," "No," and "Not yet." Believing that doesn't make faith a "crutch" because you still have to walk the path, and make real choices that have real-life implications. Faith is what keeps us from getting cocky in the good times ... and bitter in the bad. Praying for you right now!

This is interesting to me. I am an adult adoptee who recently found my birth mom. She is Catholic and I was also raised Catholic by my a-parents. We are not communicating right now as she said that she is leaving this all in God's hands and waiting for him to let her know when resuming our reunion is possible. WHAT? To me this is just her way of saying that she does not want to deal or work through her pain and she is using God as her excuse. It's probably the most frustrating thing ever.

I think my recent musing is related to this post. We have been trying for a child for a few years, the last year being our adoption journey. And as I've had recurring thoughts of "why are others, who started later than us, already home with their babies", and "why don't bmoms like us?", God has been quietly and swiftly leading me to where I need to be. We began this journey with pretty strict "criteria" - we wanted a newborn, Caucasian or Hispanic, with no more than minor medical issues. And we were on a strict budget. We turned down situation after situation bc it wasn't a perfect fit. But slowly we started to see the error of our restrictions. My breaking point came during Lent this year. I got so frustrated with my friends not being supportive of our adoption hopes (essentially, I wanted them to repost our "ad" on their Myspace/Facebook/Whathave you for maximum exposure), and they just weren't doing it. So I let them know how I felt about their lack of support, in no uncertain terms. That week, the sermon at Mass was about Abraham being willing to sacrifice the son he prayed for, for God. And that's when I heard God's voice saying that there are more important things in life than my desires, even the desire for a child. That same week, a friend of mine told me about the daughter of a family friend who was pregnant. Within 15hours I had met the young girl and spend 3 hours with her. DH and I spend time with her the next day, three days after that, and the following weekend. We were bonding just find, except that she was very hesitant about her decision. My friend who told us about this girl said something that further brought me closer to God. She said: maybe she's not the birth mom you are looking for, but maybe you're just what she's needed in her life right now, to help her appreciate getting pregnant in an awkward time in her life. Then I knew, God was telling me to quit focusing so much on myself. Then last month, something else happened. I was going through adoption photolisting (I've been doing so for months, but there were never any healthy babies, so I kept increasing the age criteria just bc). But this time, I came accross a listing of two brothers, a 3 and 4 year old, and when I showed DH, we had to inquire. Instantly, we knew we needed to get a homestudy addendum to increase the age in our preferences. Then we found out there was a mistake in the ethnicity description of the boys' profile, and again we made sure that our addendum included these boys. From specifying ethnicities, we went to "any race". Unfortunately, two weeks later we found out that since we are out of state, we will not be considered for the boys. But the very next day, we inquired about another little boy. We had previously passed on him (!) bc he didn't fit our previous ethnic criteria. But as I saw him this time around, God tugged at my heart to try to convince DH to inquire. And it worked! The past week has been chaotic, in trying to make sure that we do everything possible to be considered for this little guy. Even though we have our homestudies "in the pool" for two other children, and even though "our birth mom" is still deciding if she will place her child with us or not, my hope is for this little 4 year old boy on the other side of the country. I wrote a letter to his case worker explaining why I feel so strongly about him, how we will make sure to honor his heritage and do our best to maintain contact with his other family. We're in limbo right now, and I know it's dangerous to get my hopes up without any guarantee that he will become our son. But every day I ask God to help me do His will. And every day, I remember that if this little guy doesn't come home with us, it's because God has a better-suited family for him, and a better-suited child for us. So our long wait has made me realize that God wants me to make some changes, reconsider some attitudes, in order to find our forever child. But several of the other parents in our support group who have also waited for quite a while, instead of adjusting themselves, are resigned that perhaps it is not God's will for them to become parents! If God put that desire in your heart, then you must follow it. And if what you're doing isn't working, try something else. No matter what, persevere! So sorry this has been so long, but thank you for humoring me. This has been a very important spiritual journey and set of realizations for me, and perhaps someone else might also be blessed by reading it.

In my own life experiences, as long as we put all our trust in God...COMPLETELY, and just place our lives in his hands, he will answer our prayers IF it is HIS WILL. My husband and I were blessed with 3 beautiful children. Two on earth and one in heaven lost through miscarriage. With the two full term children, I was on bed rest half of the pregnancy, However after our son was born, they had to do an emergency hysterectomy due to a condition called Placenta Accreta. We were not done having children. We have talked about adopting early in our marriage and then after the hysterectomy God was asking us to embark on this journey with us. People may say "at least you were blessed with two." That does not take away the fact that it is very difficult when you have a yearning for more children. I look at it as IF God is asking you to join him on this journey and it is HIS Will, it will happen. How lucky we are that God has chosen us to adopt... I mean he must think pretty highly of us all to ask us to take on such a tremendous task.