Family

Today is my birthday.

I am so looking forward to the next few days when we will celebrate Thanksgiving.  With Abram finally home, it will be a special day indeed for all of us. 

After a few days at home, 11 of 12 of us came down with the flu.  It was a catastrophe of biblical proportions!  We actually had multiple times when two kids were vomiting at the same time!!!!  Only one among us escaped unscathed...Abram.  So we've determined that he is either the strongest...or the Trojan Horse who brought it to us!

I've been reflecting over these past few days about God's grace and the visceral way we experience it through adoption.  It's the same each time, though the circumstances are different.  We have waited, prayed for, anticipated and fallen in love with the child who is to come home to us...but they have known little or nothing of us.  We simply cannot wait to embrace them...yet they eye us suspiciously and proceed with great caution into our world.  I think it was our first adoption when the application of this same situation in the spiritual came to light for me.  God is pursuing us, He was pursuing us before we knew Him or desired Him.  When we first experience Him, the first taste of this wild, spiritual reality, we too proceed with caution, doubt, and perhaps some suspicion.  He has loved us all along, yet we begin to love Him after we've walked with Him for some time.  Once we've experienced His hand guiding us, protecting us, and providing for us.  Even still, He receives us into His family fully, irrevocably, and patiently waits for us to love Him in return.

One of our sons has taken a much longer time than the others to bond with us, me especially.  He has always held his heart back and accepted me only so far as the services I provided him of food, clothing, and help with homework.  Recently, just before Abram came home, this one who had yet to fall in love with me, started to warm.  Just three weeks ago he made a book for me and left it on my pillow.  It was entitled, "My Family."  This is the child who when he came home said to me, "your family has got a lot of kids, but I'm the best."

He was always like that, he would never include himself in being one of "my" family.  He was a free agent in his heart and mind.  Part of this was due to the foster home environment he had been in for many years.  His foster mom, who loved him dearly, never disciplined him...never, ever said no to him...and he was like a boy raised by wolves when he came home to us.   The first time we met him, he was 3/4 up the wall in a McDonalds.  When he was called to eat, he stood ON the table, in his SHOES, and SQUATTED over the food, eating wildly.  We were freaked out!

He thought, I believe, that when someone loves you, they never tell you no. I think that he interpreted our rules in the house to be declarations of our hatred for him...and even though I knew it...I could do nothing about it for he lacked any sort of judgement even on matters of safety.

In the book he gave me he had drawn pictures of each of us, the first page, "Mom and Dad, I love you."  Then, page by page, portraits of his siblings...each noting their differences and unique qualities in the drawing of likenesses.    On the last page he wrote again, "My Family...let's have some FUN!"

I was struck at how the miracle of family had finally taken root in him.  He had finally fallen in love with us too.

Tonight, at my "second birthday dinner" we prayed quickly as the kids were all hungry and ready to eat.  But this one, the author of the "My Family" book, he said, "Momma, can I pray too?"

Then he prayed, "Dear Lord, today is our Momma's birthday.  Thank you for her.  Thanks that we love her so much and she does so much for us and loves us everyday.  Thanks for this food we get to eat, but thanks for my Momma, more than anything."

I hugged him and cried, and he hugged me for all he was worth.  It wasn't forced, it wasn't awkward, it wasn't showy...it was REAL.

There it was again.  God's grace. 

This is a photo of our gang, minus our precious kids who are in the States...at my 1st birthday dinner yesterday...

And a photo of Abram with Daddy and Momma too...he is adjusting so smoothly...the EASIEST one we've ever had...Mr Sunshine, singing, humming, laughing, and always trying to joke with us...

Happy Thanksgiving from our family, to yours!  Thanks be to God for He has done great things for us, and we are FILLED with JOY!