There were once two children, deemed orphans, alone and in despair. Adults around them took them into care, gave them clothes and fed them and let them sleep in a safe home. Night after night they waited. Waited for their mama and papa from halfway across the world to come and rescue them. At least that is how it looked from the outside, a rescue. But the truth is, we didn’t rescue them, they didn’t wait for us. They were just living life, being kids, depending on the grown-ups around them.
Until one day when that mama and papa met them at the gate to bring them home. Home, a place they’d never been. Home, a place and people they left behind. Home, a new beginning, a fresh start.
Scared and brave, but without a choice, at four and six, they walked into our arms. Already in our hearts, they grew. Now finally in our arms. They knew us only as stories and brief visits and dim memories and wrinkled photos. There was no way to explain the depth of a new beginning, the length of forever, the love of family to them.
Over and over we’d just have to show it. To prove it. To be it, love and family and forever, to them. Over and over. Again and again. With joy and also, with sorrow. Because grief. Because loss. But because love. Because Love.
And also because patience and grace and forgiveness and prayer. And books and community and counseling and tears.
We grew deeper. We stretched farther. We reached down, bent low, played games and read books and listened hard. Prayed harder. Loved hardest.
And the Lord blessed us over and over. With amazing kids, with bold hearts and brave souls and kindness in their bones.
They know love, not because of us, but because of Him. They know family, not because of us, but because of Him. They are rescued, we are rescued, not because of us, but because of Him.
We love because he first loved us. 1 John 4:19
I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. John 14:18
A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows,
is God in his holy dwelling.
God sets the lonely in families. Psalm 68:5-6a
