The River
So I have been ping ponging between my feelings lately.
I have felt like a little old lady that sent all her money
to some Nigerian prince internet scam. I mean how
stupid could we have been to trust the system we trusted in? How were we so naïve to have chosen an agency
based on a bible verse and a few reviews they put on their website? Why did we think human trafficking would not
happen this way in America?
Then I have felt like we are exactly where we are supposed
to be, and this was a lesson God wanted us to learn. Maybe to be more informed and maybe to make a
CHANGE.
Two things have been bothering me above all else.
Kids were taken from mothers/families that wanted and LOVED
them.
This could negatively affect the chances for orphans in the
future to be placed in loving homes.
I want change in our systems that will save families like
ours/Moses’ from being put through this kind of heartbreak.
But I don’t want that change to decrease the number of
international adoptions even more drastically. They already have been significantly declining in
the last ten years.
SO what now?
How can we support agencies and orphanages that are ethical
and who’s mission is to give an orphan a home?
At the same time making sure we are NOT supporting kids getting taken
from their families for a dollar amount?
The Lord will redeem our story…I believe this. He’s not done with the Schmid family. We are not forgotten and neither is
Moses. God’s will was for him to stay with his
biological family…my question to God, what was our role in it all? I am still trying to figure out and piece
that together. God’s will God’s
will. What was/is that for the Schmids
Lord?
I have been having dreams of
rivers. I have been kind of obsessed
with what this means. I have always felt
like God speaks to me in my dreams. So
many times I have woken in the middle of the night after a dream where Moses
was in my arms and then someone pulled him out and runs away and I can’t catch
them. These have been replaced with
dreams of rivers. Whenever I think of Moses from the bible I think of him found in the river in that basket. Of all of the big ways God showed himself in Moses' life, I feel like a baby being found floating down the river in a basket was the most incredible. A simple and impossible act of faith by Moses' mother. In my dream, I am swimming in a
river and all of a sudden the current is so strong and it sweeps me away and I
can’t swim back no matter how hard I try.
I swim and swim and can’t get upstream where I want to be.
Maybe I should just let go and let God take me wherever that
river is flowing.
Maybe I have to let
go of the control I have so deprerately fought for over my children.
Maybe I dream of the river because of the floods of tears
that have carried me here.
Maybe it’s the drowning and trying to get up for air. The
way I feel when I let myself think of
him and the sadness overwhelms me.
Maybe it’s the way time moves like a river and there is
nothing we can do to change the course.
The anger I feel when I think about how time could’ve stopped when I
held him in my arms and he called me momma but it didn’t and I never saw him
again.
Whatever it is I am obsessed with finding the meaning behind
the river.
We named him Moses (drawn up out of the water/river) but his given name was Dieu le Veut (God's will) How fitting? I wanted him to be drawn out of the river to us but that was not God's will. The whole time I believed his name meant God’s will was for him to be in our family. When all along God’s will was not ours.
There was a song I used to listen to all the time when I
found myself in the car praying for God to let us be together. I always thought I would use that song in the
video of his homecoming when he came home.
When I hear it now I think about how I did get to hold him and it
changed me. And I cry. And beat my fists
and cry out to God. WHY?
Tried to keep you close to me,
But life got in between
Tried to square not being there
But it's there that I should've been
Hold back the river, let me look in your eyes
Hold back the river,
So I can stop for a minute and see where you hide
Hold back the river, hold back
Once upon a different life
We rode our bikes into the sky
But now we're caught against the tide
Those distant days all flashing by
Lonely water, lonely water,
Won't you let us wander?
Let us hold each other?
Lonely water, lonely water,
Won't you let us wander?
Let us hold each other?
But life got in between
Tried to square not being there
But it's there that I should've been
Hold back the river, let me look in your eyes
Hold back the river,
So I can stop for a minute and see where you hide
Hold back the river, hold back
Once upon a different life
We rode our bikes into the sky
But now we're caught against the tide
Those distant days all flashing by
Lonely water, lonely water,
Won't you let us wander?
Let us hold each other?
Lonely water, lonely water,
Won't you let us wander?
Let us hold each other?
Hold back the river-James Bay
Maybe I will sort through all these feelings/dreams and figure them out soon. Right now, feeling angry and sad and hopeful....always hopeful.