what completes you?

Is it your spouse? Your family? Your friends? Your job? Your house or car? Is it Jerry McGuire? (couldn’t resist that one!).

This is a question that I have spent some time with lately. What is it that completes me?

I think that most people would answer that family and friends are top priorities in life but I would beg to differ. All you have to do is take a good look at our North American culture to see that many people in fact put other things first in life such as a job, financial security, and accumulation of stuff. Others would answer that God or faith is a top priority, but again I question the truth in that statement (this is such a Sunday School answer). If God were truly a priority in our lives I believe that the world would be a much different place.

When we were unsure if our adoption process would move forward because of the Hague Treaty I really began to take a good look at where my center was and what completes me. Would I be able to be joyful without a family? Was my center focused on having a child and then I would finally be complete and whole as a woman? My honest answer to those questions would be, “no” and “yes”. It was then that I realized that I needed to re-shift my focus and re-center myself. Even though I do feel that family is important for a variety of reasons, this can not be what completes me. I think it’s partly infertility that throws many women off their center. Infertility takes over your life. You live and breathe it every day…every month. Having a baby becomes your focus. This easily occurs because when there is something that you want, that you can’t/don’t have, you start to see it EVERYWHERE around you!

I’ve been working at really putting God at my center, this is especially important to me during my waiting time. It’s very easy for me to be consumed by adoption and feel that everything in my world will finally be right once we get that one magical phone call. With this as my center I do believe that I will drive myself nuts and be obsessed! I daily remind myself of the truth that it is the Lord who completes me…not D and not a child. When I sit in the room that will hopefully one day become a baby room, I pray for God to fill me with his joy and presence and not stress that the room is empty.

Have I got this all figured out? Absolutely not!
Do I always feel at peace about the waiting and knowledge that God is what completes me? Nope!
Do I still stress about when I’m finally going to be a mom? Yep!

But I take great solace in the ways that God is working on my spirit. I turn to Him more quickly these days for peace in my heart. And my prayer is to honor who God is while waiting.