Healing

                                                 5 out of 7 of my goofy kids!

I'm tempted to put up a sign on my house: "Healing Zone". Two of the four children I have adopted are very verbal and much more likely to share memories and feelings with me. It's such a relief that the language barrier, while still there, is much smaller. Usually these conversations take place while we are painting nails or doing crafts together. 

They're now able to share how scared they were when they found out they were being adopted, how confused they were about what that would mean for them. At such tender ages with limited exposure to the outside world, they were shocked that we didn't speak Spanish. These things I knew had to be true before, but to hear it verbalized makes it so much more real.

As hard as it was for us to go to Nicaragua for 6 months, it was all still very fast and sudden and scary for them. They were taking on SO MUCH. Loss and tragedy led them to an "orphan" status. But that had become their "normal." A scary adventure brought them "family". As big a deal it was for my husband and I and teens to go to Nicaragua, it was a bigger deal for these 4 kids to come and join us in our family!

It's nothing short of miraculous that in that journey and in the midst of all that, they could laugh and play at all. Hearing their accounts, it just keeps me conscious of the helplessness and lack of control when others make all your life decisions for you. Such is the life of a vulnerable child and how much more a child alone in the world. 

Sometimes I need to remind myself of all they have been through. As they laugh and play and love and mean it more and more when they call me "Mama", I sit back in amazement of what God has already done. Sometimes the journey to "healed" seems long. I have to be reminded of how far we've come...

And to be reminded that we have all been hurt, that this life is hard. God loves us so much and He brings healing in His wings...and we are all in the: "Healing Zone" until that day He brings us home with Him where I know I'll be able to change the sign over our home from "Healing Zone" to "Healed Zone." 

"But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall." ~Malachi 4:2