9 March MMXVII

Today is one that has been quietly hovering since I became aware that Song-Felicity was our daughter and that she was, unknowingly, waiting for us to get to her. It is one I have silently anticipated with both sorrow and sadness and yet also with a deep, hushed, joy.

Today marks the day that Song-Felicity has been in my arms longer than she was in the arms of her China mother. And my awareness of that makes my heart swell with gratitude and break all at the same time. During these past nine months I have been gifted with a front row seat to God’s redemptive and restorative work in the life of His beloved child from China and my heart has completely claimed Song-Felicity as my daughter. I have witnessed her grief giving way to joy and her insecurities thaw as cautious trust emerges. I sense the assurance that this fragile trust and security will only take deeper and sturdier root as she continues to grow and bloom within the garden enclave of our family. Through her homecoming, I have gleaned a precious glimpse into the way the Father longs to adopt us all and to cradle us as His children.

But with each day that passes my recognition of my daughter’s China mother has grown and taken root within me as well. I can no longer feel the deep joy that radiates from being in the presence of our precious girl without also feeling the weight of the sorrow I know another mother is carrying in her absence. Watching this child grow so sick and weak that her only glimmer of hope rested in an uncertain mercy of strangers coming to her rescue is beyond unimaginable to me. My heart is not yet ready to leave Song-Felicity for even a single morning of preschool. Yet she was loved so very selflessly before by a mother who longed for the healing our daughter’s tiny broken heart enough to trustingly trade it for an eternal break in her own. And I am becoming ever more aware that, through sharing in the maternity of our child, we will perpetually share in that heartbreak as well.

This Lenten season provides a lovely lens through which to view this paradox of juxtaposed grief and joy. And I am growing to suspect that anything of authentic beauty often blooms in the midst of pain. Newborn children through the labor of child birth, rainbows through frightening storms, strength through tempted weakness, dawn through deep darkness…

And His glorious resurrection through the despair of death.