Spending Time With Our Boys

Last week I had the privilege of traveling to Ghana.  The purpose of the trip was to help our friends, Nick and Typh, bring their girls home.  Within that overarching purpose was a million smaller stories God wrote this week.  The whole week was incredibly purposeful.  Long story short, Typh and the girls did not get to come home when I did on the 20th but will be traveling home TODAY with Nick!  An even better ending than we could have written.  Even in all that there is so much I could write about and how when God's plans are not the same as yours, He can bring you to a place where you submit to His way, His authority and call it good. 

The phrase the Lord gave me going into this trip was "I see. I know."  Everywhere I turned this was happening.  The Lord sees every single orphan and He knows every single need of every single person.  That is mind blowing.

The part I do want to write about is spending a couple days with our boys.  I got to spend two days with them, which going into it didn't feel like a lot.  I was praying that the Lord would use those days and it would be multiplied and feel more like two months.  Being with them my heart was so full. The Lord answered that prayer.  When I arrived, each of the boys ran up to me and gave me big hugs.  They were so excited to see me.  I, of course, started crying as I hugged them.  I had waited a long time for that moment! 

He is almost as tall as me:)

 

Since the boys are older, I was praying about how to interact with them.  The Lord kept making it clear that they felt loved by me just sitting with them or just watching them play.  Before I had arrived they constructed this high jump bar out of bamboo and sticks.  They would run and jump off a cement block and jump over the stick.  It was pretty awesome.  The younger two boys are extremely athletic and I text Nate that gymnastics will be in their future!  They would just run around doing flips, climbing on things and jumping off anything they saw.  The boys did this for hours.  I'll post a video of them doing this once we pass court.

I had planned to take the boys shopping while I was there to get clothes for church, so we did that next.  I love that no matter what country you're in or what culture it is, boys are boys and kids are kids.  They were less than thrilled to be shopping!  But I could tell they loved leaving the mission center for a little bit and getting to spend time with me.  On our way home I got them Sprite and gave them a bag of Goldfish crackers to eat.  I found out this trip that Ghanaians of all ages love Goldfish crackers:).  I loved being able to do this because this is something I do with our kids here when we go on dates.  Their eyes were as big as saucers throughout the whole trip.  It was great to love on them in this way.

Our oldest son is a leader and he loves God.  The headmaster at their school told me that sometimes he won't have his homework done because he's been at church and he will tell his teacher, "God comes first." LOL!  He is a deep thinker.  He takes on all the hurt, all the emotion and he tries to process all of it.  I learned this trip that all of that processing can look like he's angry or sad but he just doesn't have all the words to go with what he's feeling.  There were a few times he was just sitting and staring with a very serious look on his face.  I sat down next to him and I asked him if he was sad or happy.  His response was, "I am sad that Emily is leaving.  I am happy that you are here."  Emily was one of the volunteers that had been at the center for a few weeks and was leaving that day.  As he said this, the weight of his pain hit me like a ton of bricks.  This boy has endured so much.  So much loss.  So many good-byes.  And this day he would say good-bye to Emily, Typh's two girls and then me.  I told him I would be right back and I went into the other room and I just cried.  I didn't want him to see me crying.  My heart was hurting so much for him.  The pain in his eyes and the weight of what our boys have endured because of our sinful world was too much for me to handle.  The Mission Center is an amazing place for our kids to be and they are very well taken care of, but I felt the weight of sin that day and all the sadness and really hard things these children have endured and why these children even need to be adopted in the first place is because of our sinful fallen world.  God never intended it to be this way.  I am a crier for sure, but I begged the Lord to please just let me get through these two days with them without crying.  I was fine with crying all the way back to Accra, but I did not want to cry while I was there.  In Ghana, when they see someone crying they do not know what to do.  It's not encouraged and it makes everyone feel uncomfortable.  So I sat in this room fighting with myself to stop crying, yet feeling the weight of what he felt and not wanting to self-protect.  The Lord just kept saying 'it's purposeful'. 

I reluctantly told God that I was okay with whatever emotion He gave me for the rest of the day.  It's so easy to self-protect and not want to enter into the pain.  It's so easy to hold it all at a distance and just keep it all at arm's length because you don't want to get hurt.  I learned this trip, though, that entering into the emotion of our adoption is actually a huge gift.  For me, as I invest more into their story, their personalities, their pain, who God has made them and anticipate how all of that fits into our family, it drives me to God.  It drives me to my knees to be in constant prayer for them and our family.  I don't have the ability to do any of this on my own. 

Soon it was time for us to go back to Accra.  Typh went to get all our stuff from the hotel and I sat down with all three of the boys.  I started to cry again.  I told them that this is how God made their mom and it's okay that I'm crying and they don't need to be afraid.  The oldest's face immediately went back to hard and serious and our middle son began to also cry.  That was an unexpected gift to me.  I was sitting next to our youngest son and I couldn't see his face.  It was all an incredibly amazing God moment.  I looked into their faces and told them how much God loves them and He sees and He knows.  God sees each one of them.  God knows each one of them better than I ever can.  Earlier that day in church, the pastor said "Every victory has a battle and without a battle, there's nothing to win."  Because they are old enough to understand, I told them how God hears them and that they can engage in this battle, too, by praying.  I spoke life into them and reassured them that we are fighting for them but more importantly God Himself is fighting for them.  I told them no matter what happens that their hope is found in Jesus.  I hugged them, took their faces in my hands and told them how deeply loved they are.  I kissed their foreheads and repeated a phrase that our oldest son had spoke over Typh's girls earlier in the day.  "This isn't good-bye but I'll see you later." 

Later, I realized that no one has ever cried over them before and that was what they needed to see.  That was the purpose. 

As we were driving back, I kept asking the Lord if all this is superficial.  He said, "It's not superficial, it's supernatural." 

 

John 14:18 "I will not leave you as orphans.  I will come to you."

 

 

**We are still waiting for a court date.  Please continue to pray the Lord will keep opening doors and that we will pass court soon.