When all of the red tape is cut and the journeys overseas are made, we will be bringing a child into our hearts and home… how much we anticipate this day! For us, it will be a day of joy, of promises fulfilled!
But not for our child. On that day, our child will lose everything he or she has ever known, ever loved, ever found comfort in. The familiar walls of the orphanage, maybe the only home he or she has ever known, will be replaced by the unknown. The uncaring caregivers will go away, only to be replaced by us (Mommy and Daddy!) but we will speak with foreign words – even the sounds we use will be different and strange. The sounds, sights, smells, and even tastes of their new world will be completely unknown and alien to our child. What courage it will take to face this new world! What horrible fears will have to be overcome… all without knowing what joys lie ahead!
One of my prayers is that God will prepare our child for what is to come… for us, for the new world he or she will step into. I pray that God will give our child faith and courage to bravely face the unknown in order to obtain the promise of a family– even if the knowledge of what “family” means is incomplete. I ask God to make the holes in our child’s heart shaped like us so that when the time comes for us to meet, we will be recognized as the filler of those holes that have been caused by abandonment and living life without a parent’s love. How Ian and I yearn to fill these holes with our parental love! We do want to mend the mind and body of our little one – to teach him or her wisdom, to provide an education that will equip him or her for the life ahead, to provide medical care (as we are adopting a special-needs orphan), to nourish him or her with good food! But more importantly, we want to mend our little one’s heart that has been broken by poverty, neglect, and abandonment.
The longer we travel this adoption journey, the more of glimpses I get of God’s heart for our adoption into His family. Oh, how He must long for us! And yes, He knows that the holes in our hearts desperately need healing and that the world we are living in now can do nothing to fill those holes. How we need to come to Him for this healing and care, nourishment, and education! And LOVE! The world of faith we step into to get close to Him is foreign, strange, and at times scary! And, to tell the truth, we have no clue as to the rewards and blessings we enter into when we step into the world of our Abba Father!
So I pray for God’s children too, the same things I pray for my child. It breaks my heart sometimes, when I see the orphan in my friends, family, coworkers… in myself. We are afraid and alone, abandoned. But how we cling to the only thing we have ever known – to the fear, the loneliness, to our loveless world! If only we could see the Father reaching out to us with open arms of love and healing in His wings!
beautiful.
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