J'Adore

When I saw my son for the first time, they wheeled him in tiny isolette.  All 7 pounds of him.  I had yet to hold him.  Twelve hours of labor had made this girl shaky so this was our moment. 

I felt it, I watched it, I saw it, my heart fly out of my chest and march straight into that isolette.  I thought he was the single most gorgeous thing I had ever seen.  He looked exactly like his daddy, yet his eyes were unbelievably and exactly like mine. 

It tore me open in ways I could not have imagined.  And funny thing, I never wanted to be stitched back up.  The vulnerability of motherhood is crazy wonderful and perfect in every way.

Eight years later, I sat in a little office, exactly half way across the world.  It was not twelve hours of labor this time, but twenty-six hours of flying.  I felt ill at ease as I heard Russian and English dance back and forth. 

We had been told, repeatedly, that the little girl’s whose picture we had seen might not be available.  We had been told our path may be to select a child that was the system.  We had been told to stay quiet, eyes down, and wait.  11 months had been an excruciatingly long labor. 

Suddenly the door opened and my daughter was ushered in.  The one whose picture I had held tight and wept over and prayed over no less than a thousand times.  I could at last feel her breath.  Only this time, my heart broke open over her and the 150 million orphans that would not find their mamas that day.  And it has never been stitched back.

Paul writes in Ephesians, that God adopts us.  We children of different mother’s are chosen.   But He doesn’t stop there.  He continues with WHY.  He adopts us. ….  “Because it gives Him great pleasure.”

That is crazy good.  The Creator and Lover of our souls takes pleasure in us, you and me.

Don’t you just want to walk straighter and love more and seek Him in the places that are hard and ugly and unlovely?  He is there spilling light in the darkness.  Let’s be there with Him.