I saw what I saw and I can't forget it
I heard what I heard and I can't go back
I know what I know and I can't deny it
Something on the road, cut me to the soul
Your pain has changed me
your dream inspires
your face a memory
your hope a fire
your courage asks me what I'm afraid of
and what I know of love
...a few words from one of my favorite Sara Groves songs
The song sums up my thoughts after every trip to Guatemala. Each time I return from Guatemala I leave a bit of my heart behind.
Traveling to Guatemala with children who are 17, 15, 7, 6, and 3 years old is an adventure. Spending time with the 7, 6, and 3 year old children's birth and foster families was a leap of faith.
How would everyone handle the time spent together?
How would the children feel when reunited with the women who had either given birth to them or cared for them in their first months of life?
It was a gamble for sure.
The truth is each child handled the visits beautifully.
While I believed before we left that these meetings would be beneficial, I now know they were absolutely the right thing to do for all parties involved.
For the birth and foster mothers the visits granted much desired peace. To see the children they had given life (or cared for like a mother) healthy, happy and loved was a dream come true for all of them. For our children their birth/foster mothers are no longer a stranger we talk about and look at in photos. They are real women who love them and hugged, cuddled, and kissed them. For me, the adoptive mother, it was joy come full circle.
Yes, there was sadness present. In a perfect world there would be no need for adoption. Our world is not perfect. The birth mothers in our family have difficult lives. Their decisions were not made in haste or arrived at easily. They made difficult decisions in an effort to provide a life for their child that they knew they could not.
Right now I hang in the balance - between two worlds. My life of luxury here in the United States and my extended families' lives in a developing nation seem at opposite ends of the spectrum. While I suspected that one of our birth mothers lived in extreme poverty, this fact was confirmed during our trip.
I saw photos of her home and I am haunted.
My soul is disturbed.
My heart is hurting.
I am unsettled.
I have returned home a different person with the knowledge of some of what I learned last week. Now that we have met her face-to-face I hope a relationship develops. I am unsure what this will entail. I must rely on God to reveal how our family fits into her existence.
In the midst of working through this reality I must be careful not to be flippant toward the everyday. Please forgive me (or at least be patient with me) if I appear to be frustrated at the ridiculous "drama" of life in the United States.
It is one thing to be aware of the fact that people in today's world have no running water or no indoor plumbing or not enough food to eat or no access to clean water or no warm/comfortable place to sleep but when it is the very person who gave your child life it is an entirely new reality.
Some of my posts in the near future are going to be an attempt at working through emotions and thoughts. It is cheap therapy. I welcome your prayers and feedback/thoughts dear friends.
I read the following this morning and intend to pray it daily:
"God, would you do a miracle for our family? Would you cause us to remember what we have seen and heard and then go and do something about it? Would you prick our hearts to be sensitive to the poor, the suffering and those around us? With time, it always seems like our pain is dulled and the sting loses its hurt. Would you keep the emotional wounds that were carved during the past week from healing?”
So incredibly grateful for our week in Guatemala.
I heard what I heard and I can't go back
I know what I know and I can't deny it
Something on the road, cut me to the soul
Your pain has changed me
your dream inspires
your face a memory
your hope a fire
your courage asks me what I'm afraid of
and what I know of love
...a few words from one of my favorite Sara Groves songs
The song sums up my thoughts after every trip to Guatemala. Each time I return from Guatemala I leave a bit of my heart behind.
Traveling to Guatemala with children who are 17, 15, 7, 6, and 3 years old is an adventure. Spending time with the 7, 6, and 3 year old children's birth and foster families was a leap of faith.
How would everyone handle the time spent together?
How would the children feel when reunited with the women who had either given birth to them or cared for them in their first months of life?
It was a gamble for sure.
The truth is each child handled the visits beautifully.
While I believed before we left that these meetings would be beneficial, I now know they were absolutely the right thing to do for all parties involved.
For the birth and foster mothers the visits granted much desired peace. To see the children they had given life (or cared for like a mother) healthy, happy and loved was a dream come true for all of them. For our children their birth/foster mothers are no longer a stranger we talk about and look at in photos. They are real women who love them and hugged, cuddled, and kissed them. For me, the adoptive mother, it was joy come full circle.
Yes, there was sadness present. In a perfect world there would be no need for adoption. Our world is not perfect. The birth mothers in our family have difficult lives. Their decisions were not made in haste or arrived at easily. They made difficult decisions in an effort to provide a life for their child that they knew they could not.
Right now I hang in the balance - between two worlds. My life of luxury here in the United States and my extended families' lives in a developing nation seem at opposite ends of the spectrum. While I suspected that one of our birth mothers lived in extreme poverty, this fact was confirmed during our trip.
I saw photos of her home and I am haunted.
My soul is disturbed.
My heart is hurting.
I am unsettled.
I have returned home a different person with the knowledge of some of what I learned last week. Now that we have met her face-to-face I hope a relationship develops. I am unsure what this will entail. I must rely on God to reveal how our family fits into her existence.
In the midst of working through this reality I must be careful not to be flippant toward the everyday. Please forgive me (or at least be patient with me) if I appear to be frustrated at the ridiculous "drama" of life in the United States.
It is one thing to be aware of the fact that people in today's world have no running water or no indoor plumbing or not enough food to eat or no access to clean water or no warm/comfortable place to sleep but when it is the very person who gave your child life it is an entirely new reality.
Some of my posts in the near future are going to be an attempt at working through emotions and thoughts. It is cheap therapy. I welcome your prayers and feedback/thoughts dear friends.
I read the following this morning and intend to pray it daily:
"God, would you do a miracle for our family? Would you cause us to remember what we have seen and heard and then go and do something about it? Would you prick our hearts to be sensitive to the poor, the suffering and those around us? With time, it always seems like our pain is dulled and the sting loses its hurt. Would you keep the emotional wounds that were carved during the past week from healing?”
So incredibly grateful for our week in Guatemala.
4 comments:
and I am so incredibly greatful for you. Tears flow for your journey. I will pray that you get extreme clarity on what God will have the next step for the Davis family be. We've got to get together. Tell you sister to get her butt to Cincy and take her friend with her;) Love you.
I, too, pray that God keeps all this ever before me. It stirs my heart deeply. Lest I forget, or at least loose some of the urgency of this need, I have a plastic container on my dresser,with the one birth mothers picture taped to it. I am inserting money into it that I save by giving up things. It's getting harder for me to enjoy lunches out with friends when I think how far this money would go in buying desperately needed food. God help us all in this land of plenty, to be more generous.
If I have ever met a generous person in this world, it is you Mom.
Thank you for showing me the "how to" and the importance of being generous with whatever one has been gifted with.
Ok, if the two of you (Jen and Holly) don't get over here to Cinci soon I am going to explode!
Name a day...
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