Philly Area mom, Life forever changed by adoption
After nearly 2 months of waiting and watching daily to see if he would be a YouTube star, THIS happened while I was in China.
My phone exploded with texts right as were leaving one morning as my family erupted with excitement.
Drew’s totally famous. Like over 800,000 views famous.
It’s somewhat comforting to see THIS LINK and get confirmation that the professional photographers who followed us to the park on our last day and were all up in our faces were for a legitimate reason.
That’s me, the I’m-crazy-glad-that-I-still-had-a-pack-of-stickers-left-in-my-backpack me.
In case you don’t read Mandarin and you don’t want to fight Google translate for salvable meaning, here’s how (I think) the article translates for us English speakers.
Love Without Boundary
On October 12, 2015, 15 team members came to [this orphanage] and spent a wonderful week with children here. Also, they built deep relationships. During the week, they were singing, dancing, and playing games together. Also, they taught kids to draw and do handcrafts. They even accompanied them to the Botanic park to extend their vision and knowledge.
The kids had an unforgettable week. Through every warm and impressed moment, despite how it was short in time and with a language barrier, we saw that love has no barrier. Love is rooted in the kids’ hearts.
A team member born in the 1990s said it was her first time to visit China and also the first time to communicate with the kids. But, when the kid called her Mama, she was very impressed and thought it was really meaningful to do something for the kids.
When the team was leaving, the kids pulled the hands of the foreign Dads and Moms and did not want them to leave. We gave them handcrafts and cards to express our gratitude.
Our last few months of 2014 and first few months of 2015 changed all future China trips for us forever. For 6 months, our single-family home became a double-family home so that a very special little person could start her life without any fear. At about a month old, that little person and all her big people who cared for her returned to China, leaving our home feeling very empty with just the 6 of us.
As the team who joined me at the orphanage headed back to the states, I got on a fast train in Beijing and went to spend a few days in their single-family home where Helen treated me as she would a sister. She made me eggs with tomato and Chinese pancakes and steamed bread—all the things she makes that she knows I like. And, we chatted long into the night about the marriage book I am reading, Drew’s new guitar lessons, Lydia’s gymnastics class, how the older kids are doing in middle school. We also talked about the worries of parenting and adjusting to a new baby, the expectations on them to give “gifts” to Caleb’s kindergarten teachers, and how the neighborhood grandmothers shake their heads at Grace’s disposable diapers and tell Helen she’s lazy for using them instead of traditional split pants. She’s Chinese. I’m American. We’re so very different as are our worlds. Yet, there are so many things that we share and so many places in our hearts that the other is able to encourage. And, no China trip of ours would be complete ever again without at least a few days with Helen and her quiver.
Oh, how I love her little ones who are growing and learning so fast that my heart aches that I’m missing it all when I’m across the ocean. Gracie girl is so big and smiley and vocal, not at all that sleepy little baby who at one time lived here. And, Caleb seems inches taller and definitely more grown up now that he’s an official schoolboy.
The day I left to return home, I got up early to see Caleb before they took him to kindergarten at 7:30am. Right before they left, they gathered in a circle and held hands and asked me to join them and lift up him and his day of school. When I thanked them for inviting me into that, they said, “Of course we would. We only started doing that because we learned it from your family. There’s so much we learned from you.”
When you live so closely with others, truly living in community with others, they get to see it all. And, it’s not all pretty. In fact, most of it is not pretty at all. What a blessing to me to know that they took away something so beautiful despite our frailty. What a blessing.
Everyday we entered in, we started in this place. There we’d gather to be served hot leafy water before we started the work we came to do. We walked by this wall over and over again throughout our time there, coming and going. No one knew what the red characters meant until the end of the week.
That is what hangs on their wall as their mantra.
When we left that place at the end of the week, I had only the energy to send my husband a one-line text.
I am poured out.
There, over the course of only one week, that was where we all were. Poured out.
It looked like this.
and like this.
and like this.
and like this.
It looked like this.
and like this.
and like this.
It looked different for each one of us as we served in the ways we were called to serve. Teaching, rocking, playing, talking, laughing, asking, hearing, cheering, loving. We were poured out. Our unguarded hearts emptied and left fragile. But, that’s right where we all wanted to be at the end of this trip—vulnerable and in need, longing to be filled again and desperate for the One who was near and able to do just that.
