Saturday, January 19, 2008

Somewhere ... in Krygyzstan

James 1:17
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above,
and cometh down from the Father of lights,
with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.


Tonight as I sit here and watch Adoption Stories on television, I watch an open adoption story where I see an adoptive mom rubbing the tummy of the birth mom who is having her daughter.

And I stop, and think.

Somewhere in a country that I couldn't pronounce, spell or find on the map a mere three months ago, there is a woman who has my daughter in her stomach. She is growing the most precious gift that one woman can share with another. She is filling a place in our family while losing a piece of her heart.

When my daughter moves in her stomach, she wonders what her future will hold. While I pray for Ellie and her birth mother, somewhere else, her birth mom is rubbing her stomach and Ellie, calling her a different name in a different language. And God is watching over and orchestrating it all.

While I am anxious with anticipation, with butterflies in my stomach, she has flutters in her stomach and pain in her heart with the decision she will make that will change multiple lives forever.

I hope I can make Ellie understand how very much her birth mother loved her and wanted more for her than she might be able to offer. I hope I can make her understand that it was the hardest decision her birth mom would ever have to make. When I take her from her country, her heritage, her birthright, I hope I can understand how important it is to make sure she understands where she came from and what her heritage and culture is and was. I hope I can help her understand how much two women loved her and that this world is not perfect--that only by the grace of God was I blessed to be her mother and not the woman who had to make a choice to make an adoption plan for her. I hope she will understand it was not about her as a person.

I wish this were a perfect world where adoption did not have to happen. I wish all mothers had the option and lives that allowed them to keep their children. But, that is not the world we live in. I've read so many articles talking about how wrong it is to adopt internationally; how wrong it is for children to have to leave their culture, their birth country. In a perfect world, this would not have to happen. In a perfect world, children would not be abused, aborted or adopted. Our world is not perfect. Our daughter will not be perfect. If any of us were perfect, we would not need a Savior. However, our daughter will be the perfect gift from God to us. I hope we can be worthy of such a gift.

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