Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God In All Things

“For we were saved in this hope.”

And so we told her — through papers and phone calls and emails, as if we could will her to know our love across so many messengers and miles — that we were coming. We would bring her home along with her new sister, Hope. Having made our decision, we settled into the process.

Then Nate came home from a morning prayer meeting and said, “I think we need to go to Uganda — now.”

My heart slumped. It was as if I’d lost nine years’ worth of marital work in nine seconds. Back again to newlywed, when I was nearly heart-dead from placing the same boundaries of control on Nate that I’d placed on myself.

“Now?” I said. Although my four-page trip-prep checklist was nearly complete, we still had no sign of a court date, and the Ugandan courts closed in about three weeks for a long summer recess. If we went now, we chanced staying months in-country and taking on all of the emotional and financial expenditures of raising a family of four (make that six) in temporary living quarters.

I grilled him.

Why now? Where did this thought come from? Was this direction from God or just a boyish craving for adventure?

The truth is nothing about adoption is safe. We sign papers and write checks and make timelines as if any part of this process is secure, and then we’re shocked when the battle waged in the heavens over these children’s lives encompasses the natural.

The fields of the fatherless are war stained.

I forgot about that when Nate suggested doing the unconventional. He’s crazy, I thought.

So we got down on our faces. I, asking for confirmation. Nate, balancing the certainty of what he thought we were to do and his wife’s hesitations.

Once again, God gave me opportunities to advance. To see the strength in this man I was given in the same way He sees the beauty in this weakhearted woman who was Nate’s bride. Because really, every issue in my marriage can find its source in a rift between Nate or me and our heavenly Father.

Six days and ten bags later, we left. Our lawyer said, “Don’t come.” Our agency said, “Don’t go.” Both were certain that we faced three or more months in-country, because there was “no way” we’d get into court before the summer recess. But my insecure heart chose to follow the lead of the man He had given me. I’m pretty sure I had missed many opportunities to practice trust, but something inside of me said, It’s not too late.

“Jesus told me they were coming,” she said to the woman who confirmed the news a day later. She knew before she was told that her day had come. Her family had arrived.

We watched on the steps of our guest home for the gates to open to the car delivering her. It was the day after we’d arrived in Africa. Kampala’s sky had set too early for my liking, but God knew this holy moment needed a curtain of privacy. My family waited in the dark for this baby to crown, and I sensed the aroma of God filling the birthing room.

The car came to a halt just long enough for us to hear her squeal from inside: “Daddy!”

Lily launched out of the car, and in seconds (after joyful acknowledgment of her new siblings) she found herself no longer fatherless and in the arms of her earthly daddy. Such a picture to me, that lanky seven-year-old with her legs wrapped around his waist and her arms clasped behind his neck as if to say, Hold my story, Daddy. Hold all of me.

Even in that moment, the release of the months of waiting to brush my fingers along Lily’s skin brought with it the weight of reality.

I was being entrusted with a life, broken, in the midst of my own healing.

I wasn’t ready.

I wasn’t ready to cup my hands around a face malnourished from touch and be her emotional IV drip. Babies raising babies is what I felt then and in the days that followed.

Lily’s adoption was a glorious mix of human desires and God’s strong hand to raise them up. I too was growing to be a confident child, eyes wild and cheeks flushed by the delight of my Father, sitting on His lap and asking big things of Him.

Even with all the waiting and changing behind me, I was just beginning my pursuit of this beautiful girl, just beginning my pursuit of all His new frontiers.

And Hope? When we chose her name, we had a two-dimensional version of her in our inbox, accompanied by four sentences. I sat on the bed, computer in front of me and heart racing, ready to absorb everything about this child, who might just be our child.

Three of the four sentences spoke of what she didn’t have, not who she was: she was clear of HIV, fatherless, and without a real home. Even her picture was indistinct; she still wore the uniform of the orphanage where she lived.

Buried in those words was the only information we had on her personality: “She is a very active girl.”

And so like every parent, we chose a name knowing only a gender and that this child could kick.

“Hope,” we decided, as we drove across the Kansas plains with the Rockies at our backs on a family vacation, just days after seeing her picture on our screen. The barrenness that winter had left behind seemed an appropriate backdrop to this name, one that was more about us than it was about her, at least at the time.

This was our year to hope, to walk away all filled up with what His Word tells us doesn’t disappoint. We were choosing His storyline over our circumstances, having had a small taste that circumstances look a whole lot different when He overshadows.

Her name was an extension of us, of His work in us. We didn’t yet know that this semicasual pick was perfect, both for who she was and what she would become. Her name would be our signpost.

Five months later, I saw Hope for the first time. It was the day after Lily barreled out of the car and into Nate’s arms. We pulled up to Hope’s orphanage and were swarmed by those who’d shared bedrooms and lunches and playtimes with her. They knew more of her than her picture and those four sentences.

She fumbled nervously over the doll we brought her, shyly relieved to look at something, anything, other than us. I kissed her cracked and soiled skin as if it were baby soft. Most five-year-olds aren’t pushed into becoming a daughter to strangers in one day. We cloaked any awkwardness we may have felt with overstated warmth, seeking to ease her nerves. But hope had already been doing its work.

She led us around the orphanage proudly, anxious to show us her bed. I wondered how long she’d spent smoothing out the creases of the covers, knowing we were coming. While she boasted in her native tongue about the care she’d taken with her bedspread, my eyes fixed on the only sprig of light in that drab room. Amid grays and blues and browns, hers was the one bedspread in the room that had color. It was also the only one that had words: “Hope It’s Happy,” it read.

We hadn’t told her yet of her new name, but she’d been sleeping under it for months. He was speaking over her even then.

Hope had done what it always does: it preceded us.

The days that followed revealed this child to be a bit more than just “very active.” Nerves from a life lived long on the streets kept her from slowing down.

“Catch me, Daddy!” she cried across the field in heavily accented English, as she darted out of sight when Nate said, “Come here.” Love in any form made her run. She proudly wore the label “mischievous” that one caregiver had given her.

When Nate held her tight and whispered other words — “I love you. You are my daughter” — Hope’s formerly fatherless self vomited on his chest. Her body and soul weren’t ready to handle another’s arms. In the face of the love, unbroken, that we continued to pour out alongside her misbehavior, she crumbled.

But God gives life to the dead. He calls things that are not, as though they are.

Weeks later, in a casual conversation while still in Uganda, we learned that Hope didn’t have a surname when she entered the orphanage. Before she knew of us — and before they knew of us — they had assigned her the Luganda name Suubi.

It means “hope.”

The Lord had been rewriting her story even before we arrived in it.

Now He was asking us to participate, because the Word dwells among us and takes on flesh. We would wear hope in Him, for her, just as she wore her name. We would behold Him as the one who enjoys when we hope, who positions us, daily, to live in hope.

We also learned when our Hope was born. It was the same month God had once promised me a child, the same month Eden was born: September 2005.

We’d been in Uganda two days, Lily and Hope were in our arms, and we were off to the paperwork races. We knew our early arrival meant forfeiting the traditional adoption in-country experience. The work that normally would be done before we came, arriving in time to enjoy a casual, cultural experience while adjusting to our children, was work we’d now do ourselves.

Long days and into the nights, we found ourselves traveling the rock-ridden roads of Uganda chasing paper. Our kids, old and new, made beds at our feet and drooled over themselves in sleep, folded up in all sorts of angles in the car that held this craziness.

We were all tired.

This certainly wasn’t how I’d envisioned our first days as a family of six.

Africa witnessed some of my weakest moments. I stretched to believe in bureaucratic and logistical miracles on little sleep, with obstacles confronting us every day. Long hours in the soft prayer room off my bedroom, my feet slippered and a cup of tea in my hand, would have made it a lot easier to pray clearly into what felt like chaos.

My flesh was taut around my circumstances, but my heart was being given opportunity to grow.

On one particular day, we had decided to file our case with the court system in one of our children’s villages. We were tight for time. Courts closed in two days for the remainder of the summer season. To get a court date assigned within this two-day window was unheard of. To not get a court date assigned within this two-day window meant a few months longer — at least — in Uganda.

We left the capital city of Kampala an hour later than we expected. This was early, for Africa time. We had a multiple-hour drive in front of us, and though the road was paved, our bodies rocked and bumped as if we were on a rickety old roller coaster. My hair stuck to the back of my neck, and I sweated in my court clothes. We chattered away as if this were any old day, but I knew that the hourglass was almost empty on the Ugandan business day, our last day to make our miracle request that our case be heard in court the next day.

Those days in Uganda, I lived out of my heart, not my head, purely as survival. If I’d had any time to analyze the events unfolding and our prayers for the impossible, I would have quickly rationalized myself out of hope. But the gift of God was that very weakness, my flesh stretched thin to the tearing point. Sleep deprivation and flash-pot circumstances, ever changing, didn’t afford me much time for reason.

Our driver knew our hurry and had, himself, become invested in an outcome. But thirty minutes outside of the village, he swerved to the side of the road and launched out of the car. He scratched his head and was joined by our lawyer, who was also wearing court clothes in preparation for making his absurd request seem normal in court.

Flat tire.

Roadside assistance service doesn’t exactly exist in the bush.

I looked at my watch and absorbed what this flat tire meant. Not only would missing this chance at a court date mean spending the summer trying to forge a family in a guest home, but every month longer meant a deeper slide into the perplexing abyss of international adoption. Adoptive parents pray their children home because they know that any day the doors on the adoption policies of their children’s countries could shut.

We stood staring at our predicament.

Schoolchildren passed us, chanting in a foreign tongue, uniforms stained and eyes revealing a life lived long in their short years. Gray-haired men pumped the pedals of bicycles carrying women sitting sidesaddle. People on motorcycles — boda bodas, they’re called here — streaked past without giving us a second look.

I dialed the number of the one friend we knew in Uganda. I couldn’t get the words off my tongue before I heard, “Wait, is that you?” She wasn’t asking if that was my voice; she was asking if that was my car, in front of her, on the road.

The bus carrying her and another family headed to this same remote village pulled up behind us, as if we were suburban neighbors just passing by.

This happenstance didn’t register as rare until I climbed onto their bus with one child on my hip and another child’s hand wrapped in mine. (This was the bus they “weren’t sure why” they felt they needed to rent that morning, and the only vehicle that could have carried all of us.) I hadn’t even had time to shed tears over our delay before God had provided a response.

We held hands with these people and poured out gratitude to the God who had become our backup plan before we’d even mustered breath to ask. We were still letting the miracle sink in as the bus pulled into the courthouse parking lot before the sun set on that day.

So often, I envision warring alongside God hand in hand, mutual contributors to a great work of glory.

But Uganda left me without abilities. I stumbled and tripped and floundered my way into every African miracle — and there were many.

It wasn’t my effort and His. It was His effort and my weak yes.

It was partnership, done His way.

I couldn’t boast of how I’d earned this series of miracles or won His favor by my fervor. He saw all my foibles. Morning, noon, and night knew my repentance. There was no hiding my weakness when the power was out again, when we had standing water in the bathroom, when my food swarmed with ants and my children were desperate for the sleep and routine that our unforgiving schedules did not allow.

Every time we faced a setback, His response astounded us.

I had a side of God to witness anew in Africa.

The One who fights for me.

The One who covenants with me and wraps the strength of Himself like a seal around that covenant.

The One who simply asks for my yes.

And so I too was being pursued.

God would use adoption to Father me.

During our first adoptions, of Eden and Caleb, I’d nearly collapsed under every delay. Angry and frustrated, cursing the enemy-thwarter and driving harder at each roadblock, I couldn’t find relief. They were made to be in my home! was the line that overtook any deeper work God was doing in me. I pushed. I pressed. All toward the goal of bringing them home. That was the goal, wasn’t it? That was the singular storyline? Rescue. Redemption. Restoration. All for the child.

With our adoptions of Lily and Hope, their deep wounds alone were what threatened to lure me into their storyline. But this wasn’t just about God healing them. I would be a recipient of His work as well. The pain and hurdles of my most stunning quest — adoption — were also parts of my heart knowing hunger. If hunger won out, I just might receive new perspective. I just might grow.

I assumed, again, that growth would come through disappointment, not fulfillment. When we made plans to leave for Uganda on a week’s notice, I had to face the likelihood that a hasty departure could mean forfeiting the first family beach trip since my dad had died. I couldn’t even talk about this possibility without tears. This was my dad’s legacy trip. Though he wouldn’t be there to participate, the tradition was golden to me.

We left, and I prayed the impossible to the God who, I sensed, kept saying, Ask of Me what you want. This phrase fell counter to how I’d figured God to be in the past. It pushed me, again, to consider how I’d envisioned myself as His daughter. Not just in my infertility but also in how I approached this adoption and all of its uncertainties, God was stretching me to approach Him as a daughter whose desires matter to Him.

Resting in the back of my mind was a dream my Lily had shared with her foster mom, months earlier. She dreamed that she was on the beach with her mommy and daddy.

“But then I woke up,” she said. She found herself still underneath Ugandan bedcovers.

When her foster mom shared this with me over email while we waited to come get the girls, I wondered, Is He whispering an early promise of something that seems impossible to her — and to me?

Dry, dusty Africa was quickly becoming the land of miracles for me. I’d never seen so many “impossibles” come together. God’s fight for our little girls was remarkable.

We had packed for the potential of staying six months or more, but less than six weeks into our trip, we received a positive ruling from the judge for both Lily’s and Hope’s cases.

Weeks after arriving in-country, we found ourselves at the embassy collecting our final paperwork with the chance of making the one flight out in early August that had seats for all of us. We would either catch that flight or one nearly three weeks later — after my dad’s legacy trip.

Two days before our scheduled departure, we went, weak kneed, to the embassy, praying that the girls’ visas would be ready in time. Not one of our necessary adoption steps had fallen into place as planned. We had no logical explanation for how we’d even gotten this far. God was our story — the whole story, the only story.

As I cracked open the door to the waiting room with hardback chairs and a British news station playing only sound and no picture from the television, I walked with a new kind of confidence. A Spirit-led confidence I’d found on those barren African roads.

Five days into our trip, I had known I wouldn’t come home the same. Five weeks in, approaching a new office with the same impossible story, I wore an expression that bubbles up from a new understanding.

It had always been safer to expect that God allows suffering in the interest of refinement. While I still believe this is a significant aspect of His nature, Uganda had given me the chance to discover new frontiers of His generosity. For He also allows joy.

Yes, the odds were against an August return. But the odds were no longer what gave my heart stability.

Endurance was producing character. Character was becoming hope.

I walked into the embassy, expectant.

As we waited, Nate, who finds a friend in any stranger, struck up a conversation with a British gentleman and his American wife, who were also waiting for an appointment.

When it was our turn, we discovered that the medical reports for Lily and Hope, necessary for our visas, had never arrived. The chances of our making the August flight were now very slim.

I felt tears flooding my eyes.

A day earlier, we’d moved our flights from on-hold to in-hand (spending our last funds in the process). “In faith,” we’d said, knowing that the Father determines the outcome.

Standing in the embassy, I asked Him, Which way do I pray? Do I lean in, still expectant, or do I accept this and praise You in the delay?

After our appointment, Nate commiserated with the strangers-turned-friends. The wife quietly jotted Lily’s and Hope’s names on a piece of paper. This I didn’t notice. A friend who was with us noted it later as we retold the story.

While Nate was waiting to pay the cashier for services not yet rendered, he casually asked his new friend what exactly he did for the nonprofit organization he’d described. The man stumbled over his words to admit what he had concealed minutes earlier.

“Actually, well . . . I’m the Head of Mission for the medical facility where your children’s reports seem to have been lost. I plan to make a phone call when I leave here,” he said.

Before close of business that very day, this man found the reports that a contract employee had misplaced. The next morning, they were couriered to the embassy so that our visas could be processed.

The following break of dawn, we were at the airport, visas in hand.

We lugged ten bags up the stairs of the airport entrance. Each one was a reminder: from each season emerges a new side of God. This was our time to know Him as the One who fights for us, the One who fights with us.

A week later, my little girl smelled saltwater for the first time.

She found herself at the beach, just as in her dream. Her daddy taught her how to ride the waves just as mine had taught me. I swallowed hard as I watched small pieces of her receive the breath of life under her own father’s instruction.

I saw the powerful work of His hand, and His delight in hearing His children laugh.

For Your Continued Pursuit