It’s just after 7am on Sunday morning the 5th. I’ve been awake since around 4am. I think it’s a combination of having my days and nights mixed up, and my sleeping pills wearing off, and the realization that after over a year of prayer, I will meet my son today.
I made myself lay there until 5am and then decided that the best way to start such a fantastic day, is to watch another Ethiopian sunrise. The Islam call to prayer is still being heard in the community, a cat is meowing loudly, a mule is making loud mule sounds (not sure what to call that…) and the birds are chirping. It’s just a beautiful time to reflect on all that God has done in the past year and what he continues to do.
Let’s take a step back. This morning I woke up not really thinking about adoption. I woke up thinking about poverty and disease. It is overwhelming. No matter your reason for being here in this part of Africa, you just can’t ignore the reality. I love my God. I believe in his sovereignty. I will always have difficulty explaining to myself or to someone else why this is allowed to happen to people. I understand Biblically and intellectually the result of sin and the power of evil to corrupt the perfect existence God had planned for us.. and how that can manifest itself in war and starvation and other atrocities… but before I take that further I come to the realization that none of those things happen to me. It is so easy for me to talk about them. I have never starved. I have never been cripple in a 3rd world country. I have never watched someone die for no reason other than their circumstance. How “easy” it is for me to explain these things.
I do not understand why I am able to eat a breakfast with my wonderful husband, and hop into a van to drive to the other side of a city and have a healthy child plopped into my lap. I do not understand why my sons were spared from a life in an institution or the street. I will not be so arrogant as to believe that it was because I prayed harder than the starving woman holding a starving child yesterday that put her hands up to the window of our van. It is grace, and it is grace that I do not understand.
As I said, I love my God. I believe in his grace and his plan and his sovereignty. I pray that I would be able to say the same if the comforts of my life and the love I have for my family were ripped away from me.
In a few hours, I will meet my son. In a day, I will stand before a judge to verify that I want to be his mother. I am overwhelmed with grace both for myself and for baby Nigatu. It is hard to believe that this day has finally come.
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