Mothers Day

Today is a day to celebrate mothers. It may be selfish, but it has always been one of my favorite days of the year. This year, I am torn a bit. I am still SO grateful for my children and for the gifts they make that allow me to glance at their hearts and know they feel loved. I am so grateful to walk into the babies' room in the morning and see the 2 beaming smiles they reserve only for me. I am so thankful that this year they have a mother and are thriving with that love. I cannot help but feel blessed beyond measure. I think that is how it should be, God wants me to be thankful for the blessings He has given to me, and I am surrounded each day with more than I can count. But then, I also have had a year that has changed my heart, that has fully broken it and I am not sure it is meant to be fully fixed. I prayed at the very beginning of our adoption process that God would break my heart with what breaks His. That I would have eyes that would see the broken. And He has answered that prayer. He allowed me to fall head over heels in love with two little boys that had not just been abandoned, but had been cast away with purpose. That I could begin to repair, even if that trauma follows them, I could offer them unconditional love. God went a step further. He allowed to see faces that I would have to leave behind. To spend beautiful moments playing peek a boo with the little boy in the isolation room next to Josiah once he got out of the hospital. To see the joy this little boy got from just a few minutes of eye contact. Spending hours alone in a little room, unable to sit or stand because of severe hydrocephalous. And yet, still so alive and filled with such joy. His smile lit his whole little face by our loving him through a window. I never got to touch him, never even got to enter his room, but his eyes and his smile I pray will never leave my memory. Since coming home, I have learned that this sweet boy has many here fighting for him to get the medical care that could bring him relief. He has not been released for adoption, that is not the answer for him, along with so many others living in orphanages in Eastern Europe. But there are people working hard to change things for children with special needs there. There are people working to change the thinking of birth families and to change the conditions for the children cast away. This mother's day, I am determined to help those people to help the children that will never know the love of a mother. I will be talking a lot coming soon about THIS amazing organization that has helped and is still helping the children in our boys' orphanage and is trying to get medical treatment for this little one that so captured my heart through weeks of smiling through a window.

I think that my life has been forever changed. At least I pray it has. Not that I do not appreciate the amazing family that God has blessed me with, because I so do. But that I will never forget about the motherless hidden away in institutions. I left part of my heart in Ukraine in that orphanage, knowing there are hundreds like it spread throughout the country. My heart breaks for the ones that do not have mommies tonight. The ones that do not even know what a mama is and have never ever experienced what it feels like to be loved and cherished.