Sometimes I am such a little fool. God and I have been having a battle for the last few day???s (I am of course losing) and I have had to offer heart felt confessions over and over. I thought I would share some of my inner conflict with you because I am learning lessons down this road and the education I have been receiving may benefit someone else too.

While the ???issue??? itself had very little to do with current topics I have been posting about, the heart of the problem crossed many boundaries and bled into subjects including adoption and ESCR.

Last night I had to tell the Lord that I was sorry for my arrogance and my pride. I had spent quite a bit of time accusing Him of ???throwing me under the bus???. I didn???t intend to make this accusation but when I closely inspected my heart, that was the real root of my problem. I am not going to detail what the issue was (not in the mood for another controversy at the moment ??? coward that I am LOL) but I will share what prompted my outburst and what I think God has had to say about it.

Over the course of my life, I have often wondered why in the world God causes such awesome blessing out of circumstances that did not honor Him. Here are just a few examples:

?? Why is it that unwed young women conceive children and enjoy the incredible benefit of babies?
?? Why do people leave their marriages outside of God???s permission, remarry, and enjoy a happy new life with their new spouse?
?? Why does God allow children to be conceived through processes that put them at risk?
?? Why did God allow there to be benefit from researching on holocaust victims?

My list could go on and on. Doesn???t it seem to our human minds that if God was going to create boundaries for us that He wouldn???t allow blessings to be extended when we cross those boundaries?

And so went my accusations???.

During my lengthy monologue I told Him that I was quite frustrated because it seemed to me that sometimes when I, FOR HIS SAKE, stood against a wrong, good ended up coming from that wrong and it made me feel like the wrong just got validated. Thus???without even realizing it, I had just accused God of throwing me under the bus.

Why do Christians seem to hate grace so much? I am a terrible offender. I want to believe in grace but there are these moments when my legalistic heart takes over and I demand justice. Aren???t you so glad I am NOT God? I think we should all sigh with relief that He has not given me authority over these issues. There would be a whole lot of suffering going on and very little hope if I was running this show.

I would say I don???t like it when blessing comes from bad circumstances but I would be lying because that is only true if the blessing happened to someone else 🙂 . When I receive the blessing I am grateful. (Is this being honest to a fault? 🙂 )

And it is exactly the ???gratefulness??? issue that caused my second heart issue.

Allow me to use Ty and Tanner as examples. If I defend that it is not honoring to God to put children at risk or to conceive out of wedlock, would it than make sense to the practical mind that I would have to ???wish??? that those wrongs would not have occurred? However, if they did not occur, I would not have my sons. Could I wish for that? Of course not. So how then does one separate the wrong from the blessing?

Sometimes we make excuses for the blessing. I wonder (and I am just thinking aloud here???maybe there is more I need to investigate)???but I wonder if sometimes when adoptive parents call ???adoption??? a ???rescue???, that is our attempt to explain the blessing of something that we can???t defend. I think this is a dangerous road for us. It is impossible for us to understand God???s blessings and why He chooses to give them when He does. I am afraid that when we don???t understand His blessings, we try to come up with reasons why they can???t really be blessings. We may not actually ???say??? that but I think our actions sometimes do imply it. We try to mix consequence and judgment with blessing because that is what seems ???just??? to us. I think that is why little children that are adopted are sometimes told ???you are lucky your parents adopted you.??? Somehow the children bare the consequence because in the legalism of our hearts we insist that surely a blessing of this incredible magnitude could not have come from a boundary God warned us not to cross.

WE, Jim and I, are the LUCKY ones. God extended incredible grace upon us and Tanner and Ty???s genetic and birth families. None of us earned or deserved the gift of these children yet God blessed from the fullness of who He is. From the fullness of His love He gives one blessing after another.

In my own legalism, I have had to ask myself that if I were ultra consistent with my beliefs wouldn???t saying ???Yes I wish the sin wouldn???t have been committed??? also then imply that I am wishing for a scenario that did not result in my children? Pretty sticky spot isn???t it? I do wish that we all loved God so much that we put incredible priority on not crossing His boundaries but I can???t wish away His blessings that resulted. What to do?

I was stuck in this quandary on an unrelated issue this week and I was struggling to release the glue. I prayed that God would send me wise council because I feared I couldn???t rationalize myself out of a box in the midst of my emotional crisis. He answered. I found that I had some of the very best resources that one could wish for available to me. I consulted a nurse manager at my local clinic, my father who has been offering spiritual guidance to me for the last 30 plus years, a medical researcher, a family practice physician, the assistant to one of the most outstanding spokesman on Pro Life issues that I know of and a medical researcher from Focus on the Family. I asked God to send me wise council and looking back at what He did, I realize that He blew the doors off that request 🙂 .

After all our conversations, I came to yet another conclusion on God???s grace. We cannot look forward and we cannot look backward. We have to deal with what IS not what ???if???. God has purpose in all He does and it will never be explained in human realms.

My responsibility before God, for today, is to choose what is right. Respect His boundaries. Obey Him and submit. If the world promises the yearnings of my heart yet their ???solutions??? require compromise to God???s boundaries, I must refuse. Period.

If God then allows blessing to come from those situations that began outside of His permission, that is GOD???s BUSINESS ??? not mine. I think it was crucial for me to come to a place of understanding on this. I can???t enjoy the blessings that He pours out in my life while I am trying to insist that ???surely He didn???t meant to bless this???.

To use embryo adoption as an example (though it was not my point of reference for this discussion), some will accuse me of crying about the hunted fox while wearing the fur coat. Not true. Before God, I have no choice but to stand against wrong. I must not encourage wrong choices nor contribute to them. If God in His amazing grace allows blessing to come anyhow, for HIS purpose???than I need to embrace that and stand beneath the shower of blessing. Tanner is a blessing. Despite all other factors, God had purpose in His life. He gave Tanner to us as a gift. We were not ???undoing??? a wrong or making something good come from something we didn???t support. God chose Tanner for life and He compelled our hearts to come and participate in a miracle. A miracle of life. Tanner can only be defined as an incredible blessing. He is a blessing to our family, to his genetic family, and to every person who will ever be influenced by his life.

As my father said, when we consider our choices we have to concentrate on the here and now. Today???.we choose life. We use the circumstances that exist and the facts we have and then we make choices that honor God in this moment.

To summarize this, I believe that our obligation to stand up for right must be separated from the consequences and or blessings that may result. God is sovereign. Tanner and Ty were always in the mind of God. They were not a ???disaster plan??? 🙂 . They WERE the plan. We are called to follow Christ and respect and defend His authority in our life and in our world. If we quit shining our light, our world will bare significant consequence in the darkness that will prevail.

One cannot evaluate a ???good??? based on outcome. If that were the case, infertile couples across the world would be promoting free sex instead of abstinence hoping for more babies to be available for adoption. I would hope that this exercise of human ???logic??? will sound as utterly ridiculous to you as it is.

The blessings that occur in our life are from God born of God and for His purpose. At the end of my conversation with my dad he suggested that sometimes we just look to heaven and simply say ???Thank You???. He understands grace better than I but I am slowly walking that direction.

Jesus came to pay a debt He did not owe…because we owed a debt we could not pay.

The most awesome example of grace unmerited. I choose to recieve that blessing.

(To Heidi Jo, Dad, Carrie Earll, Kathy Norquist, Jennifer Cowart, David Davis, and Kevin and Janet Mason ??? thank you.)