One year ago today we
left behind our life as a family of four.
We boarded a plane and flew around the world to meet our most precious
missing piece, and she has completed our family in ways we could never have
imagined. I plan to write more about her
first year in another post, but I have finally found the peace I needed to be
able to write about the visit we took to her orphanage, where she was waiting
for us on this day last year while we smiled, sweated, shook, and boarded our
plane….
The reality of an orphanage
is not something Americans have a framework for understanding. They’re the stuff of movies and stories and
faraway places. If we have a picture of
the reality of orphanages at all, it might be a picture of the worst kind of
care, posted on social media as a plea to help children who are suffering. So, when we were given the opportunity to see
and try (in a matter of hours) understand the place where our child was cared
for, we had no real idea of what to expect. We just knew we needed to go.
The day we visited the
orphanage was the fifth day we had held our daughter. It also followed our fourth night of not
sleeping, because even children who seem ok during the day will grieve and rage
at having the wrong voices, the wrong hands, and the wrong smells comforting
them when they wake up. (And they wake
up a lot when their tiny bellies are suddenly trying to digest food in amounts,
textures, and quality that they have never experienced!)
I was wearing our
daughter, in an Ergo carrier, as we pulled up to the gates of the
orphanage. I remember looking down at
her perfectly pink cheek resting against me, and wondering if she could feel my
heart and the thunder it made inside my chest.
And it was in that moment that I began to hear a rushing or whooshing
background noise so loud that I could only half concentrate on the things our
translator would tell us. It was as if throughout
the entire visit I was listening to a phone conversation through a wind
storm. I’ve since come to believe that
it’s only through the great strength of the Holy Spirit that I stood, took
steps, smiled, and moved through that place.
Acts 2:2 “And suddenly
there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the
entire house where they were sitting.”
I had seen pictures of
her orphanage, so none if it was a great surprise. It’s well maintained, the children’s areas
are painted sweetly in bright colors, and there is play equipment. They hang the laundry out to dry, so there
were plenty of tiny clothes strung on lines and railings.
What I was not expecting
was the beautiful, warm smile of the orphanage professional who met us to show
us around. I was not expecting our
daughter’s foster mom, dressed in what was obviously her very best clothing, to
greet us, take us into her home, show us pictures of her foster children with
great joy, sing to our daughter, and tell us details about how they soothe this
“precious one.” I was not expecting her (daytime)
nanny to pick her up and shower her with hugs and kisses and sweet words. These were things that poured buckets of joy
into my Mama heart, knowing that I can someday tell her that she was a delight
to these women from her home city.
I expected, but was not
prepared for the silence of a room full of infants who have given up crying
because there is simply no way for two nannies to give them each the comfort
they need. I expected, but was not
prepared to see how many children were in the room where our daughter spent
most of her day. I expected, but was not
prepared to see our daughter’s paperwork, her little file of everything we’d
ever know about her life before us.
Lastly, I did not expect
and could not begin to absorb that MOST of the children we saw would never have
a family. They would never be a most
precious child of a proud mom and dad.
They always be, and yet never feel that they were someone’s baby.
Our daughter had a
foster sister, an adorable shy and sweet girl only a couple of years
older. I asked their foster mom if the
little girl had a mom and dad coming, or if they were hoping she might have a
family soon. Through a lot of back and
forth, the translator finally said, “No, she will die here. She will never be adopted.” At preschool age, how could her story already
be written? I had no words, no breath, and
the rushing wind drowned out everything that was said for the next several
minutes for me. That wind blew loudly (along
with many tears) through my soul for ten months, until I recently learned that
THAT sweet girl does in fact have a family, she is CHOSEN, and they are coming
for her. And with that, John 14:18 blew
through me, “I will not leave you as orphans, I will come for you.” There is a
mom for her, halfway around the world, who was specially equipped and trained
medically to be this child’s perfect Mama, even before she existed--a Mama who
can tell her, her whole life, you are loved, you are loved, you are loved,
until she believes it.
We on earth are so
finite. We can never know the whole
story. We can’t see until the end where
it ends. We have no idea where that
rushing wind and its strength might take us.
I think that day at the orphanage, I heard the Lord’s thunderous
heartbeat because He was carrying me, every step, buckled in, with my cheek
against his chest. It was the only way.
Phillipians 4:13, “I can
do all things through him who strengthens me.”
