always November in my heart

 It is the end of November.  I am reflecting on this month as Adoption and Foster care awareness month.  It was first meaningful for me back in the early 90s when Roger and I were dating.  We were traveling to Chicago to spend Thanksgiving with his family and decided to stop at the Iowa capital in Des Moines for a stretch break.  Wouldn't ya know they had all kinds of posters up declaring November to be Adoption/Foster Care awareness month!  What?!  The whole state?!  Yep.  I'm pretty sure I leaned over and gave my hunky boyfriend a hug and whispered in his ear....."you know this is a sign, right?"  (Pretty sure the color drained from his face as, in his mind's eye, he saw the next 25 years flash before him....but guess what.....he didn't dump me now did he?!)

    Actually....the story backs up farther.  I have a vivid memory of a family gathering when I was a child.  There were not many children around and the adults were talking in that way that lulls kids to boredom.  I locked in on a child younger than I was and tried to lure her away from her mom to play with me.  I remember connecting with her but the details are fuzzy....maybe it was just smiles and peek-a-boo...maybe she got off mom's lap and came and sat with me.....but I remembered her.  She had brown skin and kinky hair and really huge eyes.  I knew her mom had adopted her.  That day planted a seed in me, as a young girl, to choose adoption one day if I could.  

    A couple of weeks ago we were looking through an old box of pictures from my childhood in preparation for my dad's funeral.  I found the picture.  The one of her.....and I knew it wasn't just a faded memory that I turned into a purpose and direction for my passions for adoption and foster care.  I knew it because I was able to send a photo of that picture to the woman I had assumed was her adoptive mama....over social media....and her mama confirmed it was her.  Wanna know another cool God-thing?  This little girl and I have also been facebook friends for years.....because God is rather impressive and likes to flex his muscle.  Prior to finding the photo, her mama and I have exchanged many tender and precious messages in a shared journey of the joy and suffering of adoption.  I guess, this month, in this season, this little photo is a really special gift from the Lord.  It tells me that I was called to this life a long time ago.  I would always long to be a mother to a child who needed one.  I would always be searching for the child(ren) who need me....and the capacity to love a child born to another mother would be stretched by God.....for me.  

    Never doubt that if you are obedient to a calling from the Lord, that He will use it.  This adoptive mother's yes showed up at a boring reunion in a shelter house in Iowa one summer a long, long time ago and stirred another girl to look closer, to lean in, to wonder and be curious....and to wait expectantly for the whisper of the Lord to lead her.  I am that girl...and through many twists and turns, I am being led on this same path unto amazing and wonderous stories.....stories of love and heart-ache, hope and fulfillment, redemption and joy....I have also had the honor to hear similar stories of families who have followed my journey and were also stirred....and leaned in....and have their own story of adoption and foster care.  craziness.  

    I cannot finish this reflection without noting the obvious, extravagant, exceptional narrative that has happened in my heart and my home and my story this November, 2021....in honor of adoption and foster care awareness.  We said yes to an extra kredit in May, 2020.  He spent around 18 months in foster care, in our home as licensed foster placement.  He was never a "foster kid"  He was in foster placement.  He was a special, hurting, brave, affectionate, wounded, resilient little man who gave us so much.....and we will never be the same because he changed us.  Not just Roger and I, but our kids, our extended family, our church, the friends of our kids, our school, our neighborhood....he is a mountain of influence inside a sweet little package in baggy jeans and a baseball cap.  Literally half-way through the month of November he moved from "foster care placement" to "pre-adoptive placement" and into the home and family that will be his forever happily ever after.  Half-way through the month set aside to raise awareness for foster care and adoption....he blasted right through both.....because that's how cool he is.

    So.

    It's a big deal.  Foster care.  Adoption.  Leaning in.  Hearing God's call....understanding the magnitude of importance that God himself places on children.  Seriously.  Some of us are doing it....not because it's so much fun because, quite frankly, it's not.  We do it because we get it.  Maybe we had that moment at the family reunion picnic...or maybe it was a church service or a song on the radio or whatever but please, please know....if you know who we are and you know why we are doing it....lean in.  listen.  are you being stirred?  help if you can.  if you want to help and you don't know how....ask.  

    Tomorrow it is December 1.  I will turn my face a bit to focus on the Advent season and December and Christmas but never doubt that November will always settle in my heart.