News from afar

Yesterday I got a call from a good friend. This friend has adopted 3 daughters from a E.E. country and the girls shared the same "home" that Max did. Word from that "home" is that our 'son' was placed back into an orphanage (a different 'home' than before). When we saw the girls today, they wanted to make sure we knew the latest news.

Yesterdays news, brings all new emotions and makes that once healed wound, open, raw, and sore again. In September of 2007, my heart broke when we got news that his biological parent was taking him home. I remember thinking how tough it would be to move on with life, and that life would never be the same without him. And life isn't the same without him. We now have a house filled with pink and purple, princesses and teddy bears where trucks and Sponge Bob and Spiderman use to be. There are still pictures of him up all over our house and we talk to Hannah about him, and we pray for his happiness and safety every night before she goes to bed.
In a way, I was able to look at our situation, make peace with it, and move on. We love Hannah with all our hearts, and I cannot imagine our life without her. We are now looking forward to having 2 little girls around the house, giving twice the love and hearing twice the giggles. All we wanted for Max was to be happy. When he made the decision to go home, and we would talk to him, he sounded happy, which gave me peace.

We have not been as diligent in keeping up with him in the past 4 months. When we last talked to him, his family had moved and at the end of the conversation he mentioned something about his Mom being pregnant. I cannot (and maybe do not want to) imagine the circumstances that lead her to making that excruciating decision (at least my prayer is it was a hard decision for her to make) that she could no longer care for him.

So where do we go from here? Our first priority is "M" and we hope to travel very soon to bring her home. Our plan had been to then settle down into life as a family of 4, pay some things off, and look forward to saving money to build a house. One we get home, we need to find out if the information about our little man has any truth to it, or if it is just gossip. If it is true, we would like to find a way to host him again, possibly for the holiday. From there, we will see where the Lord leads us. We are going to have to do lots of praying, fund raising, and more praying to have the finances to bring him home if that is God's will. I remember what seems like long ago, sitting on the edge of his bed during a summer visit, and in his broken English he said to me "Karina, home America. Yana, home America. Me, no home America. Why Mama?" And right then and there, I knew I had been given that simple nudge from God, saying "Go, take care, love this little man, and make him your own". We made every effort that year. Max lead us to Hannah, Hannah has lead us to "M", who knows where God is leading us next.

Being a christian is the ultimate sacrifice. (Even though I am thankful in America we are not persecuted for worshiping our God, like those in other countries are.) I can't tell God, "you can have all of my life, except____". I could keep walking down that wide path, living my life the way that is comfortable, but God wants us to go out of our comfort zone and pushes us to be better people...better Christians. I know the path back to Max may be narrow and thorny, but if that is where God is leading us, I'll follow his request.