My cell phone has now become what some might call the adult blankey. I carry it everywhere. Parameters I once set up so as not to have the phone take priority over my already pre-set priorities have all fallen to the wayside. As long as we’re potentially receiving referral news any day … that cell phone is a staple
As the wait has progressed, though, I’ve noticed a shift in my heart. What once was about God redeeming the “barren woman” has now become a story about God putting the lonely in families.
I think it started to surface when I read about a cyber-friend’s newly referred child who was “found by the police and was an abandonment case.”
All of a sudden there were children on the other end of this paper chase. Initially this is what drew our hearts towards adoption: God’s heart for the lonely, the abandoned, the oppressed, the orphan. A year and a half and many false starts later I have to confess that more times than not I’ve forgotten that this isn’t just about Sara and Nate becoming parents.
God’s loves the broken, the discarded, the shamed. He came for the hopeless, the outcast, the forgotten. So when I ask for His heart for my children, He allows me access to wells of love and affection … but they aren’t without understanding. The degree that He intimately knows and understands the pain of His suffering children is the same degree by which His love redeems. And, in order for me to tap into the love God has available for me to give my children, I must also walk the road of understanding their pain. There’s just no way for me to do this, except by God-given insight. I can’t gin it up.
He has imparted to me pieces of His heart — and, oh, how I wish I could put into words what I’m seeing … how God looks upon the overlooked. How His heart is ravished by the lost, the lonely. How He carries the tears of the broken.
And so, no, it’s not about us. And it’s not even really about these orphans. It’s about Him. His love and glory. His firm desire to redeem all of His creation. . . including those the world has labeled irredeemable. We — me, Nate, our soon-to-be children–just get to be a part of it.
So … this is really why my barbie-pink cell phone that has a ring any pre-teenage girl would covet has become a new limb. It’s bigger than me, again.
