A few days before my team arrived to Haiti, I met Mike and Sonja. They were two of my team members who came early for some reason unknown to me.
Upon first contact with them, they had three Haitian kids in the house. "This is not okay,” I thought, “they are giving to these kids and inviting them into their lives so intimately and in a few days they’re going to split, leaving more damage than anything.”
I noticed the way that they were loving them, especially one kid, Evenson. They weren’t just giving Evenson shoes, clothes, and bringing him to family dinner, they were giving him what he needed, the things that would last, and he was soaking it up.
Still, I defaulted to “this is not okay.” I was sulking in my humanity.
You see, we Americans often times come to the rescue as the “Great White Hope", throwing a temporary fix at an ongoing problem and get about our way, never looking back. We've all done it, but I think the real question we must ask ourselves is, what do we truly value? Here I found my flesh saying “no” and my spirit giving a resounding “yes”. It made no sense whatsoever, that’s for sure, but I knew something was pure about it – I just had to knead it out.
What happened after a few days of contemplating confusion cut straight to my heart.
Just after debrief one night, Mike approached me with something itchy on his heart, “I don’t know if you know why we were here before the team, but I’d like to fill you in. Sonja and I have been coming here for about three years and fell in love with Evenson. We didn’t know why at the time, but we’ve been talking to him and his family quite often for the past few years and it seemed like all of a sudden he was an intimate part of our family, one of us. What we didn’t understand was why. We still don’t completely understand why and I don’t know what it’s all going to look like from here, but…” Mike began to weep as he spilled his heart, “Colby, we recently found out that we can’t have children… It all of a sudden began to make more sense. Though Evenson has a family that loves him here in Haiti, he has become like our son. I believe God will give us a miracle, but Evenson is all we have right now…"
It all began to make more sense to me as well. My spirit was screaming “yes” because that’s what the adoption of the Father looks like. It’s freely inviting someone into our lives, giving them free reign to our things, heart, and opening up our “all" to them. It's keeping in good communication, being consistent, trudging through the deep with them, and inviting them into our joys. It's serving them with true love. I noticed that Evenson knew he was loved. He knew it and began to choose it too. He was hugged on (often), given responsibility, told his value, and he began to believe it whole heartedly. I could see that he believed these people aren’t coming to give him something and leave, the most often thing he sees, they are here because they truly love him. You see though, Evenson has to accept his adoption – he has to choose to live in it.
After quickly processing this, I took a deep look into Mike's eyes and told him why. "If anything, this little boy sees the perfect model of a love that's real, one that says he's worth it. That's why, Mike. God has given you and Sonja a measure of love that he needs to experience and you're doing it well."
You see, this is where freedom reigns.
This is where a boy becomes a man, where one life changes many. This is where replication of true love begins, at the experience of one that is pure.
Have you accepted your own adoption yet?
