Are You My People?

One of my greatest joys here at COTP is watching adoptive parents arrive, join with their kiddos and take them home to become a part of their forever families.  I've witnessed nearly a dozen in the nine months we've been here, and each time I feel such gratitude and joy at seeing precious little ones being cherished as they should.  The good-bye fete the afternoon before the family flies out is especially poignant.

A long-term staff (usually Emily), makes a treat to share, and the Nannies, kids, staff, and the adoptive family gather (typically under the play pavilion) for a final good-bye.  There is parting prayer and blessing, singing, tears, a little anxiety for what's to come, and declarations by the Nannies of "Bondye konnen" (God knows).

Not everyone loves the good-byes in the same way.  I am not the first to wonder what it must feel like to the other kiddos to see the farewell scenario each time.  Once again there is talk of forever families coming soon, the parents come, the friend spends time with them, and then leaves, never to be seen again.  From the perspective of the other kids, it is an unsettling loss, filled with uncertainty, and more than a little sadness.

A few days ago I was walking Natalie home from school.  Her warm, paint-stained hand was in mine as we walked along the gravel path behind the school, on the way home to our house at Manna.  We had just come out of the shaded part of the path into the warming sun when she looked up at me and said, "I want to say good-bye to you and go with my people.  When are my people coming?"

While I cringed with rejection for just a moment, I knew instantly what she meant.  Everyone else has people who come and take them away.  We had come but somehow stayed.  It just didn't make sense to her, so in her mind, her "people" must still be coming!

"We are your people, sweetie!  I am your mommy and dad is your daddy!" I tried to explain.

"No, Mom."  (As if to say, don't be silly.)  "My people who need to take me to United States."

Oh my sweet little girl!  How much you have to think about through all this transition!  My heart welled up into my throat to imagine what she must think and worry about, why she gets moody and mad, and how hard it must be to wrap her mind around what we are supposed to be to her.  We have the right titles, but we aren't doing what the other adoptive parents do.  How is she to make sense of this all?

She was pretty much done with me at this point, as I clearly was not getting it, so she changed the subject to the "getting home from school" routine, saying, "I need to go potty and wash my hands for lunch?"  This, too, used to be a battle with near daily crying and angry removal of clothes, but she has gotten used to this routine as we eat lunch and prepare for our afternoon nap time, and she no longer fights it.  Now she checked to see if she could still expect this routine to hold in her moment of uncertainty.

The next day, she again casually asked, "do my people come today, Mom?"  Once again I explained that we were her people, that we would be taking her on the airplane to visit all the grandpas and grandmas and uncles and aunts and friends that are learning to love her from afar, and that we would be her people forever.

She still wasn't buying it.

This continued on for a few days.  Every so often she'd ask about her people, if we were her people, if other people were still coming to take her, if we were going to visit the United States, if we were going to come back.... all of us, her, and Rose Guerda, and Noah, and Elijah, and Daddy, and Mommy?

"Yes, honey.  All of us.  We are your people, forever."

This morning Kirk scooped her up and as she held his cheeks and pressed a wrinkled nose close to his, she asked, "Daddy, are you my people?".  He responded with the question, "can I be your people?"  She said yes.  I asked her, "can Mommy be your people?"  She said yes.  And we asked if we could take her to the United States some day and come back to Haiti and be her family forever?  And she said yes.

I'm pretty sure it was the real deal; the real moment we adopted her.  Sure we had committed to it and the paperwork will soon make it legal, but right there and then we covenanted to be family.  We will be her parents and she will be our child.  We will guard her and teach her and love her and she will grow in strength and beauty and love for us, too.  We will be her people and she will be ours.

There is precedence for such adoptive arrangements.  In the book of Ruth in the old testament of the Bible, Ruth and Naomi become family to one another despite all other ties of marriage and duty being severed, and it lead to blessing for both of them, including "adopted Ruth" being included in the lineage of Jesus Christ.

How deeply God has rooted our desire to belong and how wonderful that he models this covenantal and adoptive relationship with us!  Some day Natalie will learn, and Rose, and Noah and Elijah, too, that not only are they our people, but God's, too.  While we have much to offer her, God has more, and she will be held in a covenant of grace and promise that can fill her with security and belonging rooted in His boundless love!  

My peeps:

 

Ransom Money

The price was only $1, but with the transfer of cash, and a triumphant gleam, Noah bought the life of a bird.

With countless interruptions from school each day, I get weary with deciding what is worthy of a break from the books and what is not, but earlier this week, I came home from walking Natalie to preschool to find Noah and some school boys from next door, bartering on the back porch, over the price of a common fledgling pigeon.

Ah, great, just what we need!  I figured it must be wounded or ill or some such thing leading to death and further drama, and I really wanted to shut the transaction down, but Noah pleaded.  Oh I should be saying NO to this, but perhaps there could be some lesson?

Scaly-naped Pigeon fledgling

 One of the boys with red checkered shirt and navy uniform pants had shot it out of a tree with a slingshot, stunning it, before tying a grimy thread to its ankle.  He had hoped to bring it home to eat, but Noah was bartering for it's life.  A dollar is not bad for a few bites of bird, so Noah ran in the house to get the money from his savings.  Next there was the issue that the dollar bill itself was not good enough because of a small tear where it had been creased.  Finally the boy agreed to take the damaged dollar, likely laughing all the way to the bank, or at least to the school yard snack stand.

In situations like this, I am frequently faced with the thought of how hard we should advocate for the life of a simple bird when children die around us with far less care or attention?  Despite my desire for my kids to know and care about the pain of image-bearers around them, this is a burden I dare not lay too heavily on the hearts of my children.  They know others with hunger but do not always make the connection when their hearts become full with tenderness towards the hurt of a creature.  Or perhaps the weight presses so near, creature care becomes the concrete "something" they can do to alleviate the dissonance that follows them into play and sleep.

Whatever it may be, the bird became Noah's new focus of care.  He quickly finished his school work, went over to ask a friend's advice, and she eagerly researched online and helped come up with answers  as to what it was and how to best care for it.  He began a feeding schedule with berries and eye droppers of pureed veggies, made a comfy "nest" in a box, and even setting his alarm to wake him with the sun's rising, so as to care for his new dependent to the best of his ability.

That night when I tucked him in bed, we talked about how Noah's compassion for the bird could teach us of God's love for us.  How when our lives were destined for destruction He ransomed us at far greater cost, and choose to treasure and delight in us, despite our broken, helpless state.  I asked him to think about how the love he was feeling for this small bird gives us just glimpse of how immense God's love for us is.  Just like there is not a single thing the bird can do to earn back the gift, there is nothing we can do to pay for our redeemed lives.  We just get to live in fellowship and gratitude with our amazing Creator!  And as I asked him to think about this truth I realized the whole bird hassle could be God's way of reminding me of my own adoption into his care, how he wants compassion to blaze in me, and how he longs to see his nature of grace flow out of my life...

Ransom money -- God knows all about it and plants just a glint of that grace in our hearts, so boys and their moms can reflect His love to those around them.


As with most life illustrations, they only go so far before falling short of truth or usefullness.  In our case, muddy paw prints on the porch the next morning told the story of the hungry mongrel.  He made a midnight snack of the bird, leaving the carnage of feathers and bloodied bone for the aggrieved caregiver to find and bury the next day!!!

Is the next teaching about God's tender care of the sparrow... and hungry dogs, too?