It's been a lifelong joke - I'm not a camper. I camped once in 8th grade and a frog kept me up all night and I ended up asking the youth group leaders if I could go to the house on the other side of the lake. They said no, I was mad, and I wrote off camping forever.
You know how when you start dating someone you work through the big things - ideologies, theologies, career plans, etc. to make sure that you're on the same page? Well, when Jason and I started dating, one of my top things is that I couldn't marry an outdoorsy person. Thankfully, God is faithful and Jason is less outdoorsy than I am :)
You won't find the Morales family with our ENOs in a tree (we'd probably hurt ourselves and others just trying to get in), and you won't find us backpacking anywhere. We're much more likely to be spotted in a hotel in Hell's Kitchen or in a high rise overlooking Lake Michigan. Thank you, Lord, for compatibility.
But, Jason and I have felt like we've been doing a different kind of camping for some time now.
This September we will have been married for 4 years, and we've spent almost 3 of our 4 years of marriage in the process of adopting. We feel like we're camped out. Tents up, fire blazing, Chacos tan strong. And to me, this metaphorical version of camping feels a lot like real camping. It's uncomfortable, I complain a lot, I feel turned around and out of my element. I don't know how to keep a fire ablaze or how to pitch a tent. But here I am, in the wilderness, camping out at the site where God has brought me.
““... but I am sure that God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. When you do enter your room, you will find that the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise. But you must regard it as waiting, not as camping. You must keep on praying for light: and of course, even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the rules which are common to the whole house. And above all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and paneling.” ”
My prayers these days sound a lot like that last sentence - that God would lead us to the right child in the right place at the right time. There's a difference, you see, from the perfect child and the perfect child for us. Jason and I literally have no clue how to be parents (does anyone actually know? If you do, hit me up, I need your wisdom). And we know that we will certainly, without a doubt be imperfect parents and that our children will certainly be imperfect little humans. But we have to believe that God is leading us to the true doors, no matter the paint or paneling. He's leading us to the children near and far who will continue sanctifying us, who will shape us and mold us as parents, and who we can pour into and love and cherish each and every day.
And so with that in mind, we continue to wait. The Morales fam, we're waiters, not campers. And at the end of it all, we'll look back at this time, this season that we've spent 75% of our marriage in, and we'll see that it was good for us to wait.
Now...glamping on the other hand...
I could get on board with glamping if it looked like this and the weather was absolutely April 25th kind of perfect!
