Tom Petty was more right than he ever knew- the waiting is the hardest part. By the time we got to our second adoption process you’d think CavWife and I would have had Ph.D.s in waiting. After all, both of us had spent most of our adult lives, then over 20 years, waiting for one thing or another.
We both waited vocationally. CavWife wanted to be a teacher, in a Christian school: a particular Christian school (mine is not to wonder why). After graduating with her degree in Elementary Education, she waited. No, she didn’t sit in a room by the phone waiting for them to call until she was covered in dust and cobwebs. She ended up working at the Bible Institute she had attended for 2 years. But her eye was always on that Christian school. For 8 years she waited, hoping, enduring long Adirondack winters.
She’d given up- the demanding anyway. She still had the desire, but she was no longer demanding God do this for her. She was amazed when they called. Oddly, it was difficult for her to leave upstate NY and her dearest friends that she met during that period of life.
I left the small city I grew up in just before I turned 25. I was going to seminary: over 1,000 miles away. I was escaping the cold, and a series of relational disappointments. Seminary wasn’t my plan even though it was The Plan. I thought God was crazy, but one day He turned the light bulb on and The Plan was suddenly sweet. So I wasn’t just running from things, I was also running to something. But my plan was to return to New England when I was done. Little did I know that I’d be stuck in Florida for the next 19 years. Sometimes the wait is how we move from our plan to His plan; it is a slow course correction. Our hearts need time to transition from our plan to His.
I was born in New England. I grew up in New Hampshire (part of New England for those whose knowledge of geography is fuzzy). I became a Christian while attending college in New England. My formative years as a Christian were in New England. When I left home in 1991 to attend seminary in Florida, my intention was to return to the area. God had other plans for me (sort of like how Paul was sent to the Gentiles instead of his fellow Jews), but I still have a heart for New England (much to the frustration of some friends) and long to see the Reformed church return to New England. The PCA and OPC are trying to plant churches in the region.
Cavman Considers 