Ache

A Daddy and Z date:  Hiking up mushroom rock!

    I have actually been dreading trying to write a blog post this week.  There has been a lot of frustrations this week, with the continued adjustment to communal living (40 people in one house... agh!), struggling to keep up with schedules while still finding quiet time to be with myself and my family, and missing Z during the day... so it would be easy to write a snarky blog post all about how annoyed I am with life.  But that would be missing the point.  The point of being here wasn`t to live in luxury and party it up every day- the point was to grow in my relationship with Jesus, my family, and to discern the next step for our lives in missions. 

   By those standards... then wow, this week has been amazing. 

   Last weekend we began a three day YWAM conference called the Presence Gathering, where a few other YWAM schools came and joined our base for a bunch of worship sessions, intersession, and teachings by some amazing men of God.  The Spirit of God was moving so powerfully, and it felt like every day Dave and I were both getting prayed over by people who had words from God for us.  It was an amazing weekend, and what stood out the most was that the leadership felt that God was wanting to restore dreams.  So we had prayer times where we asked the Lord what dreams in each of our lives He wanted to restore. 

    Both Dave and I felt during that prayer time that God was prompting us to get beyond the disappointment we`ve had in the past of not being able to stay on the mission field and "start an orphanage" the way we always dreamed... and He directed us both to start praying about a base in Central America that we have been interested in for a while.  We both feel that He is calling us to that base as staff and we have started the application process.  We`ll see what happens! 

    This weekend I hid out from everyone for most of the time.  My heart was heavy with a weight that I struggle to put into words.  I feel such longing for my children.  Z will be such a good brother, and he is getting to the age where he asks me for a baby.  This week I asked him if he wanted mommy to have a baby (like some of his friend`s moms have had), and he said, "yes, I want mommy have a baby.  Five babies!"  I told him that we could pray and God would bring us another baby someday.  He and I prayed, and then moved on to talking about cars (of course).  Praying with him made me realize that although I still long to have another biological baby, my ache goes much deeper than that. 

    My heart is not satisfied to have a few children.  I want many children.  I would have felt terrible, and ungrateful about that statement before I came to YWAM.  I am eternally thankful for Z, of course; I was called to be a mother.  It is not a hobby, or a season of life for me.  This is my calling.  I have been wrestling with this calling for five and a half years now.  I don`t want just a couple kids... I want to raise up a nation.  I have tried to have biological children, I have tried to adopt, I have tried to go to the mission field and work in orphanages... and I have failed...

    But my failure has not taken away the ache of my arms to hold my children.  The tears in my eyes when I hear of a child who died without the arms of a mommy to hold him.  The fury in my soul when I hear of a child being abused or neglected.  There are millions of motherless children in the world, and I am a mother wanting more children... this should be simple.

    I guess the reason I get so frustrated is because I just want to be with them.  With my children.  And every day seems like one more day of waiting for them.  They are in my thoughts and prayers, they are like phantoms in my arms, and I feel the ache of their absence in my soul.  This time we will go to the mission field, and we will find our children.  There is nothing else for me.  I have tried to fill this ache with other things, but I am convinced now... being a mother to my children is my highest calling.

    My children are out there somewhere... and I will find them soon.