Mother's Day

Dear God,

Thank you for Baby Girl and for Little Man. Thank you for letting them live here with us.

Thank you for Mama and Dah and for their Mommy and Daddy.

 Please keep their parents close to you and heal every bit of them.

Teach them to make good choices and give them strength to work hard so that their family can be close together once again.

 Thank you for Jesus and for your Spirit and for making ways to live inside of us and for staying so near to us all of the time.

We love you. Amen.

That is what Baby Girl and I pray together while she takes her bottle and has her last snuggles before bed. Our prayers are always some variation of this, but center around the healing of her parents. See, G and I may have a new-found status as “Mama” and “Dah”, but we aren’t thee mommy and daddy of these kids. Their mommy and daddy live in another town. They are sick right now and from what we hear working hard to right their respective situations mentally, physically, financially, etc.

This Mother’s Day I received sweet cards in the mail from my mom and my three sisters, got a gift from my husband and hugs galore from my family at church. I imagined myself going to church on Sunday feeling proud that I was suddenly among the elite! I was/am proud to get to be “Mama” to those kids, but Mother’s Day was a hard one for me. I cried a lot and bore a heaviness for Little Man and Baby Girl’s real mommy. What was she doing? I wondered. Was she in church or with a community somewhere? Did she have comfort around her? Was she crying thinking about missing her first Mother’s Day with her baby girl? Was she angry at me?

That’s the other side of this coin. We aren’t simply the state-approved recipients of two gorgeous love-hungry babies! It is a nice way to think about our role. But really we’re just the safe house while the real battles are being fought. Back at the kids’ home, that’s where the really tough stuff is going on. Their parents are working through emotional wounds as old as they are, battling addiction, sorting through their relationship with one another...fighting to reunite their family. I wanted to so badly to be able to call or visit the kids’ mom on Mother’s Day, to comfort her and tell her I’m sorry for how how sad and angry she must feel, but I couldn’t. I can’t encourage her in her new endeavors or text her on Mondays to tell her how proud I am of her for finding a job and sticking with it, but I can and I will battle for her in prayer. She is SO worth being battled for.

I pray that next year will be different for her.