stepping up.

I have a love/hate relationship with TV, and some other time I might write about that in more detail, but today I want to talk about something I watched last night. I saw last Thursday's episode of Private Practice (a show that centers on the lives of doctors in a California medical practice), and the end of the show disturbed me so much that I'm still thinking about it.

The episode was large about Betsy, who's father died at the end of last season. Her mother was a drug addict who died earlier. In this episode, Betsy's aunt dropped her off at the medical practice, because she couldn't/wouldn't care for her any longer. A few of the doctors considered adopting her, but all of them ultimately decided not to, and called social services to take her instead.

Perhaps its because I feel like I'm in an in-between place, a place of waiting for God to say, "That big thing that you've been preparing for? This is it. This is how I want you to serve me and love my children." And maybe its because the issues of adoption and orphans are weighing so heavy on my heart right now, but I wonder about how many times the right thing to do, the thing that God asks us to do, is right there, staring us in the face, and we walk away because we're afraid of what we might need to give up. It breaks my heart to consider how many times we let even the most obvious opportunities pass through our fingers.

I know this is a fictional story, that's its not real, but I think the lesson of it is true. And so tonight I'm wondering about the opportunities that God has placed in my path, and whether there are some that I've passed up, even as I'm praying for his clear direction.