A New Name

When I originally started this blog, I loved the idea of calling it "A Heritage from the Lord." I loved it for a lot of reasons (still do!). I love that children are our heritage from the Lord, and I love that as adopted sons and daughters of the Most High, our own heritage is truly from the Lord. And I thought that since my writing would be primarily focused on bringing children into our family through adoption that the title fit really well.

All of those things are still true, but for the last few months I have sensed a stirring in my heart that this is about something more.

This is about God.

This is about His glory and His great Name.

This is about what He can do, is doing and will do.

This is about Him getting the glory and the credit for what comes of this struggle.

This is about Him making something beautiful.

You see, when I look at where I started on this journey, I do not see beauty. I see a whole lot of brokenness. I see pain, suffering, confusion, hurt, betrayal, distrust, anger, resentment. I see myself, a woman who felt lost and alone. A woman who felt confused and hurt, betrayed even. A woman who was faced with the reality of saying good-bye to the life she thought she would have. Maybe even the life she thought she should have.

But when I look at my life now, I see the sovereign hand of God. I see that He is the One who carved out this path for us. And while it has been (and continues to be) the most difficult and heart-wrenching thing I have ever done, I can see that He is doing the impossible.

He is making something beautiful.

He is bringing beauty from ashes.

My position on this journey has not changed, but my perspective is starting to. I am not writing this today because something miraculous has happened. We have not been matched with our child. We are no closer to becoming parents than we were yesterday. We don't know when this waiting will end.

But I do know that God is taking something that, to me, looks very broken and He is turning it in to something beautiful. He is writing His story in our lives. Not the one I thought I wanted, not the one that is easy or painless.

He is leading us through a fire. A fire that burns everything away except for that which truly matters. That which will last. A fire that burns away our pride, our self-righteousness, our lack of trust, our fear, our weakness.

And when all of those things are burned away, we will be left with what counts. Unshakable trust in His goodness. Unwavering commitment to each other and to our children. Deep and abiding faith that He who calls us is absolutely faithful and able.

We are left with something beautiful.

And that is attributed to God alone. This is not something we could ever do on our own. It is certainly not something I could ever accomplish by myself. And it is not something that is anywhere near being complete. God still has so much work to do in my heart.

But I am starting to see that all of this is not in vain.

For so long I felt like all of this waiting was just wasting time. Months and months, and now years and years have passed by as I have waited to become a mother. And it has been SO hard. Impossible on some days. And I have felt like life was just passing me by and believed all of this waiting was not serving any purpose. I see now that this is not true. God is working in my heart and in my life. He has been all along, but my vision has been too clouded for me to see it.

He is taking my weak and feeble plans and letting them burn away. And He is replacing them with His beautiful plan. The plan that brings me the most good and Him the most glory.

He is making everything beautiful in HIS time. Not mine. His

And so, after much thought, I have changed the name of this blog. Because it is about more than me becoming a mother. It is not about me at all.

It is about the glory of God. It is about watching Him take something broken and make it beautiful. It is about Him and His ability and desire to restore His children to Himself, to redeem our lives so that we never have to be apart from Him.

For a long time now, I have been hanging on to Ecclesiastes 3:11, and it is the inspiration for the new name of this place.

"Everything Beautiful"

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. And He has set eternity in the human heart so that no one can fathom what He has done from beginning to end."
Ecclesiastes 3:11

This is an ongoing process. I still have a LOT of not so beautiful (OK, downright ugly) days. But I know that, in the right time, God will finish this beautiful story, and I will have quite a tale to tell my children about how God used them to sanctify my heart while I worked and waited to bring them home.

Love,
Baylor