…to change your life and the life of a child forever. It’s funny how we have our plans and the blueprint for how we are going to implement those plans. This world has a way of shaping our expectations about what we will do and how and when we will do it.
How beautiful when God interrupts those plans. I’ve had it happen in my life and I’ve experienced it happening in so many other lives; unexpected, powerful, life changing. Adoption at the core is ordained by God. Just as He took a rotten situation (our sin) and drew us to Himself-sacrificing everything to bring us into His family through spiritual adoption, we get the incredible gift of taking precious kids from rotten situations and drawing them into our families.
This afternoon we had a Heart Gallery photo shoot. Wow. These days are always bittersweet for me. There is an incredible sense of excitement as I anticipate the family that God will provide for the kids we are photographing; and yet, there is a tangible sorrow when I think about what these kids have lost. Today was no exception. I picked up a little 6 year old boy and a sibling group of two: a girl 4 and a boy 3. They were all beautiful kids and just absolutely delightful. The 6 year old made me laugh out loud as he talked and sang from the backseat. He sang bits and pieces of everything from The Black-Eyed Peas to praise and worship music. He discussed getting ‘whooped’ with a belt or a paddle with pins in it and then asked me “who made belts and paddles?” He answered himself before I could get a word in, “God did; God made everything, but God is love so why did God make belts and paddles?” I told him that God allowed men to make belts to keep their pants up! (How original!) but that it was men that used them for other things. He assured me that no one was ‘whooping’ him. (at least not now, I thought)
The other two were less precocious, but just as precious! Intermingled with Mr. Personality’s one man show was their discussion about what their favorite cartoons were; Dora, Elmo, Mickey Mouse-and they were undeterred by Mr. P’s pronouncement that those were shows for ‘babies’! He even informed me that I must be a baby since I liked those shows!
But when we got to the studio, this little 6 year old took the wet wipe I had in my hand and gently wiped the face of the beautiful 4 year old girl he had just met. That spoke volumes about him and what he had been through in his short life; he was already a survivor, already a caretaker, already an independent little guy that had probably had to fin for himself and yet he was a servant who wanted to make someone else’s life a little easier- even if it was just to give them a clean face before they had their photograph taken.
I was moved by these three, just as I am always moved. And I am praying that God will move mountains if need be to bring them into the family that He has already ordained for them. Their moment is coming, and for these little lives it won’t be a moment too soon.





















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