My Dark Brown Boy

I was looking through my pictures of all my Liberia trips. It was a good journey for the most part. I was getting pictures for a slide show that John is using to make a video to help us raise funds since we haven't paid salaries or rent this month in Liberia and the food money I left when I was there will run out at the end of this week. I would be fibbing if I said that I hadn't had a few sleepless nights over this, but in four years of being responsible for funding care for children in Liberia, God has ALWAYS provided! So I am trusting Him to once again work a miracle that will bring funds or multiply food, or however He sees fit to meet the needs of the kids and staff He has entrusted to our care.

As I looked through the pictures, I was overcome with so many feelings. Joy as I saw faces that were once there, but are now here! Sadness over faces that have been there through many of my trips and are still waiting to come home. Frustration that there are faces still needing families, but I can't ask anyone to commit to a child in the current situation. Humility as I see the conditions that our children used to live in. Joy as I see the conditions they now live in. Hope as I think of all the families waiting for some of these faces to come home, but at the same time almost despair as I think of these same families and the whole that I know is in their heart that hurts beyond belief when they look at these faces that they wait to kiss and love!

And then I think of my dark brown boy asleep in his bed just a few feet from me. I think of where he has come from. I got to see the hut he slept in. I got to see children that he would have been had for whatever reason God chose to pluck him from those circumstances and place him right here in my home.

We have had a series the past few weeks at church on parenting and marriage, basically, family topics. Today, our pastor was talking about our children and how for whatever reason, God has placed our children in our home at just this time because He needs them to be trained by us however we do it for whatever He has in store for them in His kingdom. I know Daniel probably has no idea just how powerful that is to hear as an adoptive parent, but man, it immediately made me think of my little Toben! I have struggled since seeing his village with why - I hate that I do that! But I have wondered, why Toben? Why me? Why is Toben not still stuck over there like some of the other children who have been waiting to come to home? Why did Toben get to enter the adoption program while so many others still live in the village where he did...with out a water well, without clothes, without food except what they can collect right around their home?

Tonight, Toben went to bed with a full stomach after a day of eating plenty to not just fill him, but nourish him as well. Children in his village went to be tonight with bloated stomachs...not because they were full, but because there was not enough to eat, not enough protein. Children in his village could very well wake up with a water born illness that will take their life as Cholera did Addy's because there is no safe water for them to drink. Toben can at any time walk to the refrigerator and fill his glass with safe, cold water!

I don't often think of where my kids came from...Toben or Noah. They are here now, and it is my job to train them as men of God. But every once in a while, my mind does the "what if?" game. It did that today as I looked at the pictures. What if he wasn't here? What if he was still with his birth mom? I really can't go there. My heart would break!

Why did God choose him? Why did God choose me? I don't know! All I know is I am so thankful He did!


God, help me be the mommy this dark brown boy needs! Forgive me for the times I fall short, and make up for my short falls. Help me to train Toben to be all he needs to be in order to serve You in Your kingdom in whatever capacity You have ordained. Most of all, God, thank you! Thank you for my little dark brown boy that looks at a picture of two women, one white and one dark brown, and when asked if that is your momma (meaning the dark brown one) replies, "No silly! That's my momma!" and points to me! Thank you for a woman who broke her heart by giving up a son in order that he could be mine.