2010 World Cup - Prayer for Sex Trafficking Industry

As over half a million people have traveled to South Africa to attend the World Cup, 40,000 women and girls have been trafficked in to meet the sex demands of these tourists. Our prayers are their only hope. Won't you please go to the Exodus Cry website and download their prayer guide and open your mouth for the speechless? We must give voice to the silent cries of the hearts of these young women and girls who are trapped. These are our sisters. They are our daughters. We simply cannot remain ignorant or unmoved by their plight. God, break our hearts for the things that break yours.

Broken Hearts and Baby Birds

In my last post I shared my heart and the fact that, even though I am here, day in and day out, that I cannot heal my adopted children's hearts. If God does not show up, we won't make it. But there's not a chance that He's gonna bail on this. His heart is so for them, it makes my head spin. To think about how much He had to orchestrate to put these two little girls in our family blows my mind. And why He chose me to be their mother is a mystery still unraveling. Day after day I watch as He displays His strength to heal them in spite of my weaknesses.

Today I am not only awed, but wrecked. To tell this story, I will have to back up to May 1997....13 long years ago. My 3 1/2 year old daughter had begged us for a baby brother or sister, but God had not provided one for her and she was hands-on-hips incensed by this! But alas, God heard her prayers and at least was sending her a baby cousin who would live just around the corner from us. She anticipated Baby's arrival with the rest of us and had big plans for him. She talked to him through my sister's belly and waited - impatiently - for his arrival. Just days before Baby was due to be delivered into this world, he went to live with Jesus. My heart was so broken for my sister and her husband. In our own grief, my husband and I had the task of trying to explain to our daughter why the answer to her prayers would not be arriving to attend her tea parties. My heart broke as we tried the best we knew how to comfort her. At three she didn't get "dead". Three year olds do not think abstractly, and death is an abstract concept. She wanted to know why she still couldn't see him, hold him, play with him.....

While I was still making trips back and forth to the hospital, I came home one day and my little girl had found a baby bird that had fallen from his nest. I was really too tired to even think about caring for this little bird, but my daughter was delighted to take him in and insisted that we save him. I wrapped him up in a little box and explained to my daughter that when she got up from her nap we would take him to someone who knew how to feed and care for baby birds who have lost their mommies. Silently, I prayed he wouldn't die. I didn't think my heart - or hers - could take it. She named him Kik Kik and went to take her nap.

While she was napping, Kik Kik also went to be with Jesus.

Believe me, I had words with God. Seriously, Lord? You're kidding, right? Really? I sat there and tried to figure out how I would ever explain to my daughter why God would let this happen. How would I ever defend His character to my three year old when it was in question for me personally? I couldn't imagine what He was thinking.

When she got up from her nap, my daughter ran straight to the baby bird's box. I cringed and began to explain to her that he had died while she slept. I saw total disappointment begin to emerge and my own heart just screamed. But then something amazing happened. She picked him up. And she held death in her hands. She touched it, examined it and experienced it personally. What had been too abstract to resolve the confusion in her little heart over the death of her baby cousin, suddenly became concrete understanding. Slowly, (and God knows I can be really slow in getting His ways!) I began to realize what God had done for my daughter. This dead baby bird had been His gift to my three year old.

Today another little baby bird came into our lives to heal a hurting heart. My adopted daughter, the little one from Central America, had asked me a question out of the blue just as I was about to make dinner at the end of a busy day. It was one of those questions every adoptive parent knows is coming and plans to answer in a certain way and yet is still caught off guard when it happens.

"Why didn't I grow in your belly?"

For the first time ever, I explained to my little girl about her birth mom. I told her her name and how much she loved her, and how she couldn't care for her because she was too sick, and how she had gone to be with Jesus last year. I told her how Jesus knew that she needed a family and how He had allowed her to grow in mine and Daddy's heart so that she could grow up with a mom and dad who loved her and would always take care of her. I wanted her to know that God knew she would need a family and that He had lovingly provided that for her.

She sobbed.

In that moment, I was completely powerless to do anything to alleviate the pain in her heart. I cried out silently to God to come and heal her broken heart. Is this what justice looks like? Adoption itself is not just a story of gain for a child and a family. It doesn't exist without first being a story of profound loss in the life of a child. And here I am. Just sitting and holding this little broken heart....because He asked me to. Not because I can do anything to heal her. Not because I am capable of putting those pieces back together. I just sat and held and prayed.

In just that moment, one of my boys came running in to announce that he had just found a baby bird on the ground outside. My little girl wanted to see. As we got there, God was speaking to me. This baby bird was for her. I showed her how the baby had fallen from his nest way up high in the tree and how the momma bird was powerless to help him. I told her that God had sent us to save him so that he wouldn't die and so that we could get him to a safe place where he would be able to grow up into a fine, strong bird. I placed him in a box and put the box in my daughter's hands.

And this time, my hurting little girl was holding adoption in her hands.

She touched it, examined it and experienced it personally. What had been too abstract just minutes before to resolve the confusion in her little heart over the loss of her first mother, suddenly became concrete understanding. This baby bird was His gift to my broken-hearted five year old.

We located a wildlife rehabilitator just around the corner from us and all 7 of us...I mean, all 8 of us... piled into the van. My little girl held him in her lap the whole way and then delivered him herself into the hands of his new adoptive mommy.

Is she healed? No. Did God begin a healing work in her heart - something I am completely powerless to do - with a little baby bird, just as He did for my 16 year old all those years ago? Yes. And I stand in awe, once again, of His amazing ability to make all things new.

The Cost of Justice - Part 2

We had three kids, and life was full. And then we heard the orphan's cry. We brought home a little girl with special needs from China. It was while we were waiting to go get her, that God brought this second little girl from Central America into our lives. She was beautiful. As we stared at her little picture, God confided to us that her special needs were not the kind that can be plainly seen. We knew. She was meant to be our daughter and we prepared as best we could to bring her into our family and love her with all of our might. Except, as it turns out, we are weak and our love is so insufficient.

With the news buzzing all around us in recent weeks regarding the adoptive mom who put her Russian son back on a plane to Russia, my heart has been so burdened. I have been silent for far too long. It is the time to pour out what has been brewing in my heart for months now. All I can think is that this mother must have felt terribly alone to have been convinced that putting her son on that plane was her only option. But the truth is...adoption is hard. Period. And if you add to that adopting an older child, a child with special needs, or siblings, then adoption is very hard. But that is not what you normally hear. Too many adoptive parents are struggling alone in their own frustration, confusion and despair. They don't want to give adoption a bad name, so they keep quiet. They love their children, but their love is not enough. Many times, when there are other children in the home, the feeling of constant guilt is added to the despair and frustration. And adoptive parents know that they cannot put into words what is really going on with this precious child whom they love and fought and sacrificed for.

For ten months, my heart has wrestled with my daughter. She came to us broken. I have experienced every emotion available to the human heart regarding this little girl who I call daughter. I love her. But my love is not enough to overcome the early neglect and abuse and abandonment that she suffered. Her brain is not hardwired to receive love, but to survive. What God created her to be has been altered by things never meant to be experienced by small children...or anyone for that matter. She doesn't know how to be. She only knows how to survive. She doesn't know how to love or to receive love. She only knows how to fight to try to get what she already has. And I have come face to face with the darkness of my own soul. Truth be known, I do not know how to love this child. And each and every day is a struggle to find my own capacity to love and to hope that somehow it changes her. But I fail. All the time.

So where does that leave us? I'm probably being too honest for some of you. Here's what I know today. Regardless of the facts, the diagnoses and all the reality of how far my daughter has to go before she can return to the person God created her to be, my hope is secure. I know that God is able to heal her heart. I cannot heal her or change her. I can not hug enough, listen enough, have enough grace, or even sometimes lecture enough to bring about a change in this little life. All I know is that God placed her here in our family as the place where HE intends to heal her broken heart. And I am here to say that the cost to our family....is enormous. But she is worth it. Period. He redeemed my own life from a total disaster. And He asked us - as He asks all of us - to step out of our comfort zone, lay aside our fears and get our hands dirty. And we said yes. Is it hard? Excruciatingly. Are we out on a limb way past our comfort zone? You bet. But every single day there is the satisfaction of knowing that we have chosen to lay down our lives of comfort and embrace God...to know that we are only in this place because we asked that "What now" question out of our sacred discontent, laid down our fears, looked past our suburban backyard, and embraced the unknown. And it is a privilege to sit on the front row of God's redeeming, miracle-working power in this little life. I don't have the answers. I can't do it. I am trying my best to love. And God has got it. Is justice for this one costly? Yes. Was justice for me - and you - costly? More than you know.

The Cost of Justice - Part 1

It's difficult to put into words what has transpired over the past 15 months since I last posted to this blog. Shortly after I penned those last words on Habakkuk, we got an email saying that the little girl that our family had been trying to adopt for the past 2 1/2 years had been assigned to another family. As the story unfolded it became clear that much foul play had been involved. We were suddenly faced with fighting a very corrupt attorney general in a foreign country, and we knew NO ONE who could help us. Truth be known, we might have just let her go - with much pain and heartache - had God not specifically made it clear to our family that this little girl belonged with us. That in itself is a long story, but suffice it to say, we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God did not want us to walk away and thus we were thrust into a 6 month long battle of epic proportions.

Now let's be clear on one thing. God loves the orphan. And as His body we are called to do no less, whatever that looks like. Oh, how much easier said than done this is! To love the one child God had placed on our hearts, we have paid a much higher price that I could have imagined when we first began this journey. When we made the decision to say yes to God, to bring justice to this one little girl, we had an idea that things might be difficult. The country she lived in was not really open to adoptions. Our agency had never facilitated an adoption from there before. She would be four by the time we got her home, so we would be dealing with adopting an older child. Indeed she turned out to be nearly 5 when we did bring her home at the end of a three year long process. We knew some of the sad details of her little short life and figured there would be emotional needs beyond our capability to deal with...that we would have to rely fully on the Lord's guidance, wisdom and healing for her. But truly we had no idea that adopting her would mean standing up to a foreign "king" and trusting God to save us...and her. That it would mean 3 months of nearly 10 hours a day of emails and phone calls and letters desperately fighting to see her placed where we knew God wanted her. That ultimately God would part the sea in front of us just as the enemy was bearing down on us. His deliverance of our little girl into our family is nothing short of a total miracle.

But today, as I sit here, I know that she would not be here had we not engaged this battle. Ultimately, God would be the One and Only reason she would be here, but He asked us to fight. And so we did. And....we paid a huge price. financially. emotionally. physically. But we emerged carrying treasure. Words can't express the feeling of really knowing the weight that God carries in His heart for one child. I can't really even begin to explain what it is to know that how we fought for our daughter is how he fights for us - each of us - as the enemy wages war against our souls to deliver us to a destination that was not meant to be ours. There is something holy about the battle we engaged as we had the unique privilege to glimpse God's heart in a way I don't believe we ever would have otherwise. And we are changed.

But can I confide something in you? The battle that we fought to bring our daughter into our family, as crazy and unbelievable as it was, is nothing compared to the battle we have fought since we got her home. Look for Part 2 as I share something that God has laid on my heart to share as I emerge from the past 9 months of battling the darkness inside my own heart and my daughter's.