a new adventure in love

He looks up with dark eyes, searching me.  We share a silent secret, him and me.

This moment I have shared with each of my children, and even some of my friends’ children, is precious and magical.  The sweet bonding that happens while you hold, and feed, and care for a baby blesses the spirit in ways that are unexplainable.  With my friends’ children, though, it was mostly an isolated incident.  With my own children it was a bonding that was shared hour by hour, day by day, and the weeks turned into months and into years of loving each other.

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It’s strange to have this daily beautiful encounter with my new little love.  He did not grow inside me.  In this way, he was a rather a fast surprise.  We had one week to prepare our hearts for his arrival in our home, but before that the conversation between Dave and me had already started.  I believe it was about two weeks before Mohamed came home to us that Dave asked, “Do you think you and I could take a child long-term with no promise or hope that that he or she would ever be truly ours?”

It was God who placed this question on our hearts.  He gave us the time to wrestle with it, ponder it, sit on it a while.

Outside, the midnight air is finally turning cool.  It is just Mohamed and I on the sofa.  I pray over his life, over the unknown.  I think about my “own” children and how much of their futures are unknown to me.  Yet somehow, I feel safer with that.  For Mohamed, the future is a scarier place.  And I pray some more.  It is not my job to rescue him.  His Keeper does that.

I don’t know how long this moment will last.  And as we bond, I am trying to prepare my Momma Heart for that loss.  Because it is impossible not to love him with all of who I am.  As we begin to know each other, and trust each other, and think of each other day in and day out.  As I dress him in my children’s clothes and feed him with their bottles and put his bed (and his little life) right next to theirs, it is then that he starts to feel like one of us.  And this is, in large part, why he is here.  Because we were all made to be in families.  Because God created us to have these bonds.

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Because I have seen the other babies who rock in their cribs and hit their heads on walls and floors and cushions to soothe and stimulate and make peace in their brains.  Because NO ONE deserves to start like that.

And I pray for those who do.

This door that God has opened for our family is full of complicated emotion.  It is also full of a deep sense of peace that we are doing something good and something right.  Love is a risk, but it’s always worth taking.  I know now that Mohamed will not be the last baby we care for in our home.  I pray that as I walk this road, others will begin to understand that they can too.  No matter where you live there are children that need fostering.  I believe that God is working on some of your hearts, and I believe that, just like in me, He has been for a while.

It’s a risk worth taking.  Join us in this adventure of love!

2 thoughts on “a new adventure in love

  1. Each time we show love and affection for a child whether ours or someone else’s, through touch, we are helping that child to be able to attach easier when he is reunited with his family or gets his forever family. I have been reading about attachment and it is incredible what happens with repetitive touch. It changes something in the brain and it is incredible the impact it has!

  2. Oh, Hope, I love your work and I love that you get the honor of loving a little one for Him.

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