Chance Encounters of a Redemptive Kind

Adoption in so many ways is all about redemption. It's one of the things I love most about my kids' stories. Not that they needed rescuing from their first moms. Not that my husband and I are their knights in shining armor, riding in to save the day. It's the idea that God in His grace, wisdom, and compassion formed them in their birth moms, saw the circumstances of their births, and orchestrated a divine plan to intersect their little lives with mine in order that His plan for their lives might be fulfilled. God has cared for them from the moment they were born and from that moment, He has had a plan for their lives that is bigger than anything I could imagine for them. It's a great spiritual redemption, one that magnifies God's provision. It's one that is true of every person, but one that I think becomes so much larger when under the lens of adoption.

My friend, Cate, wrote a beautiful post about how every person can have a part of this redemption story. You really ought to read it; I won't attempt to write anything nearly as nice because she has said it so well. And you ought to read it because one of the girlies she mentions, Eveline, is also near and dear to my heart. She lives at Kenson's orphanage with her sister, Saintania. They are older girls, teenagers. You can imagine how many people are scared off by their ages. And they have been through a lot. Multiple orphanages and multiple families who have stepped up and then stepped down. How crushing those moments must have been for their spirits. But if you could see these girls! They are simply amazing. Full of life and zeal. Eyes that seem to shout "I will survive!"

But there is a family now who is not stepping down, a family who is in it for good. A family whom I also know both from the blog world and in real life. They are almost at the end of the process but have quite a bit in fees yet to pay and DNA tests that have to be done. This family need financial assistance. I know there are those who think that if you have to be asking for money to finish your adoption, you shouldn't be adopting in the first place. For those of you who believe that, I'd ask you to say that to Saintania and Eveline, to look in their eyes and tell them how really only those who have their finances lined up should ask to be a part of God's story for their lives, that only those with x amount of dollars in their bank account need to apply to be their forever family.

Instead of looking at their faces and thinking that, I ask you instead to look at their faces and consider if you are a part of God's story for their lives. Yes, I said you. I know you don't know them. I know you don't know the parents and siblings who are waiting for these girls to come home. But that's what makes it even more amazing. What kind of a God must we be serving? What kind of a God would use mere people, strangers at that, to help write a chapter in the redemption story of two vibrant and resilent Haitian girls? That's the God I serve. The one who laughs at the impossible, who delights in the improbable, who relies on the slightly insane. What a God!