"More than you can handle"

A few days ago (the day after we got our travel date!) I had the opportunity to share briefly with some of the women from my church about Reuben's story. It was really good to be able to go through, both mentally in preparing, and then out loud with real words this morning how God has walked alongside us, and been so very faithful to prepare us ahead of time, and to support us in the very weak places we have been and still are. I want to add to that something that God has just shown me recently that builds on that.

It started one night as we were talking with another couple we know, and thinking of all of the religious-sounding bits of advice that have no grounding in the Bible (such as "God helps those who help themselves.") We thought of this one, which is often thrown around: "God never gives you more than you can handle." I disagreed with that for a number of reasons. First of all, although it may glorify God's wisdom in knowing what we can handle, it tends to put more glory on our own efforts, and our own apparently high abilities to  handle things - "if God has sent this my way, then apparently he thinks I can handle it!" but that night I couldn't put more than a gut-feeling reaction to it. I believe it was the day after that conversation that I came across this. I had just finished reading 1 Corinthians, and was starting 2 Corinthians, and there it is! right in the first chapter (vs. 8-11) "For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead; who delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will deliver us, He on whom we have set our hope. And He will yet deliver us,  you also joining in helping us through your prayers..." (emphases mine).

That answers it pretty clearly to me. If Paul was burdened "beyond his strength" I have no reason to believe that I will not also be burdened in the same way. What am I saying "will be" for - we ARE. Right now. And deeper and deeper the further we go into this! We. Can't. Do. This. We simply don't have enough money. God has seen to that. Adoption is not cheap, but to make sure we are fully aware of our helplessness, we have an adoption AND a significant house addition that we believe we're called to build debt free? We can't do it. We already have more than the average amount of children. And one of them has medical and developmental needs that are not severe, but definitely significant in a 24 hour, likely beyond 18 years sort of way. Add another child with more significant needs to our family? We can't do it! By the way, within an hour after receiving our verbal referral for K, Reuben had the first seizure he'd had (with the exception of one anomalous partial seizure in early December) in a record 14 weeks and 2 days. He has NEVER since the seizures started gone anywhere near that long. But BOOM; there it was. And then over the last three days, he's had four more seizures. And now we're supposed to leave him? For 9 nights? He has never in his life been away from both of us for even one night! We can't do this. And even our "normal" kids are far from perfect. Probably in part because they have less than perfect parents who can't do it exactly right. Our strength, our resources, are not sufficient for what is ahead of us.

So there we are. Beyond our strength. We can't do this. And in reading the verses above (which I've read many times over the last two weeks!) we are likely in this place because God has directed it so for a purpose. And he tells that purpose in the passage: "SO THAT we would not trust in ourselves, but in God." 

Who, by the way, "raises the dead."

It was last year over Easter weekend that God told us to GO. And we went. And were stopped by a huge "wall" that evaporated last October, so we started going again, and saw a picture of a little boy whose name, we later found out, means "resurrection of peace." We're leaving in a few days to meet this boy face to face, to shower him with love, learn who he is, let him begin to learn who his mommy and daddy are, and will return home on Resurrection Sunday. 

So we go, knowing full well that we can not trust in ourselves, but learning day by day through this to trust in God who raises the dead.

I'll end with a drawing Leah made for us on Sunday during church. She said we should bring it along with us on our trip. It's a drawing of an "enemy" on the left (see his big frowning face and thick strong legs?) and scrawny little smiley me on the right. Apparently Dad is behind me, but she couldn't figure out how to draw him. And that figure up at the top? That's God protecting us. ;)