It was only a few hours after the very emotional and tearful goodbye to the amazing 8 year boy who had lived in our house and had become part of our family for the past month. Random music was playing as I drove, and I Am came on. I had listened to this song more times in the last month than I had every month in the last year combined. It was one of his favorites and was second on the personalized playlist he had created on Kelly’s phone. He must have played that song a million times. When his mood was right, he would belt it out. He always got the “I Am” parts right, but when it came to the rest of the song, it was hit or miss. Sometimes, we would catch a few of the words; other times, we’d just laugh at his attempt.

I wonder what he was thinking about when he boarded the plane to come to Měiguó a month ago. In the video clip we saw of him before saying yes to hosting him, he said he didn’t know what America was. I am not too sure what he was thinking when he was with us for the month either, but I know he loved it. He loved us. There’s a lot of unknowns but the wonderful fact is that he came to us as an orphan living in a orphanage in the south of China with no one to call family and he boarded that plane back to China with a family scrambling like mad to get paperwork done so they can get over there and bring him back to his forever family. It was very hard to say goodbye, even for me, the “strong and stable” Daddy and ShuShu. But, there is great joy in the hard knowing that a family will not rest until he’s home.

I wonder what he is thinking and feeling now. What is going through his mind?

There’s no space that His love can’t reach.
There’s no place where we can’t find peace.
There’s no end to Amazing Grace.

The words of one of his favorite songs became my prayer for him. I pray that he experienced love, peace, and grace from us and from the God we love. And through that experience and the change it made in his heart, I pray that as he spends the next handful of months back at the orphanage, he can somehow process that there is a God who loves, provides peace, and extends amazing grace in every corner of his world, no matter where he is. I pray that God sustains him there in that place with that knowledge until his family brings him home and can continue what He started and what we joined Him in, pouring into every space and place of his life…love, peace, and amazing grace.