preparing or praying?

Quarterback stuck a movie inthe DVD player tonight.  I must say it is one of my favorites.  Sits right there next to The Shawshank Redemption.

The movie is Facing the Giants.  It is a football movie, but it's so much more than that.  I hope that one day the true message of the movie gets through to Quarterback, but that remains to be seen.  It is, however, one movie that I have absolutely no problems with him watching.  There is no obscene language, no questionable scenes, no innuendos of any kind.  It's an all-around good movie.

To pick out one or two scenes that are my favorites is quite difficult.  But there are two that always stand out to me as reminders of how I should strive to live my life.

The first scene involves the coach talking to a gentlemen who walks around the school praying for each child who walks the halls.  He approaches the coach and tells him that even though it seems like God isn't moving in the school or on the team, that He was still working and wasn't done with the coach at that school.  The coach ran after him and asked him how he knew this.  The gentleman responded with a story....

Two men were preparing their fields for planting.  Both men sought God and prayed for rain.  Only one man planted his fields.  Which of the two men prayed believing that God would answer their prayers?

The answer - the one who not only readied his field but planted it as well.

One of my favorite phrases since watching this movie has been "We're preparing for rain."  I haven't said it as much recently as I used to though.  It has been hard to be positive about our adoption.  We have done both - prayed for movement in our adoption and then just waited to see what would happen, AND prayed for movement in our adoption and prepared for what would happen when the movement happened. 

I suppose it is sometimes easier to just wait and see.  I mean I don't worry about what's going on with our adoption.  And because I dont worry about it, I tend to not be proactive about finding out what's going on or keeping in touch with our lawyer.  I have taken the stance that if I need to know something, I'll find out.  I trust God implicitely with our adoption and have therefore placed it completely in his hands.

So, then, what does preparing for rain mean with our adoption?  Well, a few years ago, we bought bunk beds for Quarterback's room since he and Joshua will be sharing a room.  We have a stucking hung on our fireplace for him.  The stocking is even full on Christmas morning.  We buy gifts for him to put under the tree, gifts which are opened by either Princess N or Quarterback and then put away until Joshua actually does come home.

More often than not though, I pray every day asking God to move the mountains that are so clearly visible in our adoption and then I just sit and wait.  It's not that I don't think God can do it, or believe it will happen.  It's because I have lost the urgency and the desperation in my prayers to my Fathe for my son. 

Our recent trip to Haiti was sort of like preparing for rain.  See, we didn't need to go to the embassy to fill out the paperwork this trip.  We could have filed that paperwork here, but it would take longer.  We could have just filed an extension on the application we filled out in November of 2006.  We could have done either of those things, but we didn't.  The approval of our application will be much faster in Haiti than doing it here.  So, we did it there.  We prepared for rain...we prepared for those mountains to be moved quickly which would require that approval sooner.

As far as he presidential dispensation goes, there really is nothing we can do about it.  It is 100% out of our hands, an 100% in God's hands.  And honestly, there's no better place for it to be.  I can, however, ask our lawyer abou it more often, reminding her that we're still here, still interested, and still very anxious to bring our son  home.

Above all else, I will pray with the urgency and desperation that only a mother with a child in a precarious situation could understand.  Whether it be a sick child, or one walking a road that leads to no where good.  Mothers just know what kind of prayers to say for their children, prayers full of love and adoration for their children and the God that created them.   Prayers for their safety and their well being.  Prayers for their future.  At times, those prayers are wrought with tears and shouts and cries of desperation.  At times those prayers include begging and bargaining.  Prayers are always answered...sometimes the way we see them answered and other times only God can fathom the reason why the prayer was answered in the way it was.

In July 2007, July 10th to be exact, my prayers were the prayers of a mother desperately praying for a miracle for her son.  I couldn't hold him or comfort him.  I couldn't even see him.  And I didn't get to say good-bye.  He continues to live in our hearts and we still have his picture in our house.  He is, and will always be, our son, whether he lived in this house or not, he is our son.  When he died, I distinctly remember screaming at the top of my lungs in my van on my way home from work, "Satan, you don't win!  You won't stop me!  I won't give up!  I'm still going to Haiti!"  Those are the cries of a grief-stricken mom whose desperate prayers of healing for her son were not answered the way she wanted them answered.  God alone knows why he answered them he way he did.  And I refuse to question why. 

So after watching this scene again tonight, I asked myself this one simple question - Am I praying for mountains to be moved and waiting, OR am I praying for the mountains to be moved and truly believing that they will are already being moved?  Am I preparing for rain, or just praying for it?  Am I prepared to pray those prayers of urgency and desperation?  Am I prepared for Him to move those mountains?

The answer - I am preparing for mountains to be moved.  I'm not sure how that will play out on a day to day basis.  What I do know is that my prayers will be filled with an urgency and a desperation like my prayers have never been filled with before.  And regardless of the outcome - to God be the glory.

As for the second scene...that's for another post.

Always hoping.  Always trusting.  Always believing.  Always loving.  Always praying.  Always preparing.  Always.