Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

We’ve all heard that familiar phrase based on the best-selling book. It is clear than men and women are different, so different in fact that the author of the book “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” proposes we are from two different worlds entirely!

Hyperbole aside, the differences between the sexes, emotionally and spiritually, were brought to the forefront of my mind recently with a situation going on in my family. I’ve already discussed this with Matt A., and received some solid understanding and truth, but I’m opening the floor a little to the anti-bloggers.

Here is the deal:

We’re in the process of an international adoption. We know this is God’s will for our lives. We view adoption as a form of international mission work and both of our hearts yearn to fulfill this desire God has placed in us through the adoption of a baby boy. We initially started the search for our son in Ukraine. We were drawn to Ukraine because we were told it had an abundance of boys, it was a very desolate and hopeless place for orphans, and it had a unique adoption structure. Ukraine has strict rules against working with adoption agencies and is not a Hague country, as such, it is much cheaper to adopt from there than many other countries in and around the same area.

Logically, it made sense, because it met my self-imposed time frame, cost, and ease of completion requirements.


Months into the process, the country came under some political turmoil and the threat of closing to international adoption to become a Hague country loomed over us. Word spread throughout Ukrainian adoption message boards we subscribed to that the country was in fact closing. We decided to look elsewhere before we became too invested in the process. After all, the news we received was that the Church in Ukraine was helping to support a large amount of the orphans there… this created a diminishing “mission field” which gave us the extra push we needed to switch our focus to a new country.

We stumbled into Russian adoption next. Why? Because it is just as desolate for orphans, just as many boys, and there was a region in Russia, Nizhny Novgorod, which would actually let us follow the same exact process Ukraine had via an “independent” adoption. Granted, we would need help, and we began the process of getting an agency to help us through this.

Logically, it made sense to pursue this, the cost would be only a little bit extra, the time frame still manageable, and my wife was darn good at paperwork so the ease of completion factor was pretty good too.

Clearly this must have been God’s will for us, right? So we started sprinting toward this goal. We had all documentation, plane tickets, visas, and even our bags packed 3 weeks ahead of time. The count down was on. Two weeks to go and we hear, again, the region we’re looking at going to is shutting down thanks to a terrible parent who went on Dr. Phil and showed the world how she poured hot sauce down her adopted Russian child’s throat as punishment.

Our sprint skidded to a halt. We had to back up and make some decisions. Why did this happen if it was God’s will? Were we doing something wrong? What do we need to change to make this happen?

Logically, it made sense that the next step would be to determine how much damage we’ve taken. What money had we actually lost due to this change? What could we do to retain some of the money? Are all regions of Russia closed or just this one? Will our paperwork transfer? Do we need to look at other countries? Once all of these questions were answered we could make a rational choice as to how to proceed…..

This is where my wife and I diverged.

At each step in this process, I felt like we had made the rational, logical choice. Did I have emotions invested into this process? Absolutely. I wanted to be a father. But, if the process took 3 or 6 months longer, it didn’t bother me. I knew that God had our son waiting for us, and in His time He would make this happen.

My wife, on the other hand, took it hard. This was the second time she was moving backwards from getting her son. She invested her emotions more and more at each stage of this lengthy process. We had finished our son’s nursery room, purchased cribs and clothes, and already had all of his bath toys. She was ready for our son to be home. Getting the news about our region in Russia closing was hard on her. However, unlike me, she viewed the closing of that region not as a sign to back up and re-strategize, but to pray harder and prepare for God to do big things.

She didn’t want to cancel the plane tickets to recoup any losses early; she didn’t want to unpack our bags so we can wear those clothes. She didn’t want to look at other options or countries; she didn’t want to wait for a better time. My wife fully believed that with the faith of a mustard seed, God would work it out to get us to Russia in the same time frame or better. She started looking at all of the varying options for other regions and found out, with the help of the agency, that there was a potential to turn in our adoption dossier by hand in Moscow, running the risk that we could be designated a child from any region in Russia that was accepting adoptions. This scared our adoption agency representative because she doesn’t have contacts in every region of Russia and we’d essentially be flying blind. My wife, though, new God could and would work it out.

So my questions are these:

- Clearly guys think more logically and girls think with more emotion, but in this situation does my wife’s faith that God will take care of it outweigh my faith that God will handle it no matter the situation?

- Did I demonstrate a lack of faith that God can do big things?

- Did we overlook a purposely closed door and try to knock the closed door off its hinges?

- As leader of my household, I found myself debating about how to pause and approach the situation logically or if I run full steam with my wife who still sees us leaving in the same time frame, how do you make that choice?

- I clearly don’t want to discount her faith, perhaps she sees what I cannot, how do you balance that in a marriage?

- Why would God create a pairing with such disparate ways of viewing things?

- What happens when a married couple prays for the same outcome but different methods?

- Am I not leading my household as God intended if I let my wife pursue a direction if I feel differently?