Replace or Redo?

We got a new washing machine yesterday, and as I was putting the laundry room back together, I discovered that the hampers I had previously used no longer fit with the new washer and dryer. My first thought was, “what can I get to replace these that would work better.” I immediately thought of a set of hampers we recently purchased for our closet. They would work perfect. I went and got one out of the closet to try it out. As I was making my new plan, I realized that the old hampers were still useful. I did not need to completely replace them with something else. I simply needed to restructure them to make them fit the new arrangement. I did some measuring, made a plan, and got to work. I took the hamper apart, shortened each piece as needed, and then put it all back together. Just like that, I had a completely functional hamper without having to go find something new and waste what I already had.


You may be thinking, “here comes another go green environmentalist message.” No, not this time.  So, why am sharing this silly story about my laundry hamper? Well, as I finished resizing my hamper and put it back in the laundry room, I felt like God started speaking to me about it in relation to our lives. Sometimes, we think we hear something from God or maybe even feel like we have discovered a gift/talent He has given to us, but when we go to act on it, the results are disappointing. Things don’t happen the way we envisioned. Maybe nothing happens at all, or worse, maybe things go terribly wrong. I think many times at that point, we assume we didn’t hear God, and it is not a “fit” for us. We decide to scrap it completely and find something new to replace it. I am wondering today if maybe sometimes God is asking us, not to throw those things away, but instead reassess and see if there might be some way to restructure them and try again.


For example, for us, we really felt God tell us to begin pursuing adoption about two years ago. We began working with a wonderful, Christian agency in November 2008 pursuing domestic adoption. We completed the process in April 2009 and began to wait. We heard nothing for months, but God had continued to burden our hearts concerning orphans and children in need. We kept waiting. At the end of October we felt sure we were supposed to adopt, but nothing had happened. Over the months we waited, God began restructuring our vision. We knew we were called to adopt, and we felt like we were doing everything we could to obey, but nothing was happening. We began to reconsider what we had heard and where we were. God challenged us a little at a time to revamp our picture of adoption and begin pursuing a different path to adopt…foster care. Yeah, I know, “I could never do that.” We said that too, but God changed our hearts and our motives. We began, as selfish as it sounds, pursuing adoption to add to our family. We are now seeking to be a home for His children…not just find a child for our home.

When we committed to pursue adoption, we stepped out in obedience; yet, we felt like we hit a wall.  We could have given up. It was tempting at times to think we had missed God. We could have looked at adoption like my old laundry hamper. It looked good at one time, but just didn’t seem to fit anymore. Thankfully, God showed us how to refit our vision with His. We are still headed toward adoption. We are just going a different way to get there.

More on that later…