On Receiving

This evening. The Indian summer sun setting. My kids, all nine of them, playing. Dancing. Laughing. Fully enveloped in the carefree of childhood. I sit on the sidelines and watch. For a moment, I let myself get caught up with the blissful perfection of the scene in front of me. I take a snapshot and tuck it away into my mental memory box. 

Most moments don't seem as perfect as this one. Most moments I don't feel the way I do like I did tonight. And especially lately, I haven't felt like I've been able to stop and breathe in the simple moments with my children the way I would like to. I have felt burnt out, weak and exhausted in every sense of the word. My honeymoon with India is long over and I have started to notice the way living here has taken its toll. Spiritually and emotionally, I have felt drained beyond my limits. I have struggled to see clearly through what seems like a tornado of dust in my eyes. In summation, it's just been hard. 

This last week, I think my body finally caught up to everything else in me that already felt totally spent and I got really sick. I didn't have much of a fight in me to begin with and after a few days of feeling pretty awful, I was about to check myself into a hospital. Just before I did that though, the group of women who have been volunteering in my home came to pray for me. And you know what? God healed me. He made my physical body well again and He restored my health right then and there. But something more important happened than that. He led me to a place of surrender. He invited me to lay down some things that were never intended for me to carry. He led me beside still waters and He said to me, "I care". And in that, true healing and deliverance was made complete in me. 

I love moments like tonight where I really get to see what God has done. Like an artist displays his proudest piece of artwork so The Lord shows off His greatest, most glorious creation when I get to watch my children happily play in the evening sunlight. All of a sudden, I am overcome with awe as I stand back to look at the picture God is painting in the lives of my girls and I. I can hardly comprehend how far He has taken these kids in such a short amount of time. I sit and remember November 19, 2014 when I took home such fragile, fearful, shattered and broken little girls and then I look at the life and joy that now sparkles out of their eyes. I wonder how my traumatized children possess such pure faith and trust so shortly after the darkest days of their lives. For a second, I find myself trying to take the credit for this. And then I remember how far He has taken me, too, since that day. How much He has changed me, shaped me, stretched me, molded me, broken me and then so gently put me back together through the lives of nine socially outcasted little girls crashing into mine. And I know that what I'm looking at is nothing but a picture, a masterpiece, of His astounding grace.

God knew that I would need them just as much as they need me.

I am learning how to let my children love me with their perfect innocence and deep compassion. I am learning how to lay on the couch with them all afternoon and just enjoy the remarkable little people they are. I am learning how to put the check list away and fully soak in the miraculous relationships that have been birthed between these nine souls and mine. I am learning how to see moments with my girls as if God were letting me peek into a small slice of heaven.

Mostly, I'm learning how to open up a gift that has been sitting there, waiting for me all along. So far, it is well beyond anything I could have ever dreamed up would be inside.