When I welcome another into my life, whether imperman- ent or for as long as I shall live, I usually either consciously or subcon- sciously ponder whether I have the capacity to love and care for that person at a meaningful and lasting level. I know my own hesitation to enter in with another all too well and ashamedly admit that my selfishness to preserve my cocoon of privacy often overrides what my heart is readily telling me to do, and that's to do just that, enter in. The irony of it all is that when I do listen to my heart and open it up to others, it's rarely, if ever disappointed. On the other hand, when I listen to my mind and close myself off, I'm almost always disturbed and downcast. How quickly and easily I forget the joy and jubilation of giving myself away in exchange for the deceptive discontentment of independence, autonomy and seclusion.
For me, and I know Victoria, the crossroad of decision to adopt or not placed this dilemma right into the cross-hairs of our forward vision. It was inescapable. And quite frankly, it was indescribably frightening. Days and moments before I first met Willow in that hotel foyer in Lanzhou, China, my mind was dizzy with anxiety and haunted with the perplexing and pregnant pause to enter into what I/we were about to embark upon even though we had just done it two years earlier with Poppy. Like most parents, we naturally debated whether we had the capacity to open our hearts and home to another, especially a complete stranger and commit to love and care for her the rest of our lives. Now but four to five months later, while just recently lying next to this once total outsider in the dim light of a day's first passing hours and in a cold and sterile hospital room, staring into her glassy eyes and holding her limp little hand wrapped with surgical tape and pierced with a feeding tube, I can hardly imagine what life was like before her or what life would be like without her. The thought of either stirs up the very same feelings I have when I choose to reject another from my life, malcontent and disenchantment.
Who can know the depths of the human heart but God alone? And apart from Him, it would be but but a beating organ at best, and even that a miracle in and of itself fabricated by the wonder of His Hand. It's the stretching and discomfort of it all that paradoxically soothes beyond the pain and into a rhythm that it was always meant to resonate. For this I ask, I beg of my Lord to push me and our family far beyond my/our comfort zone and into sacrificially living for and with others. This heart has yet to plummet its fullest depths, and I hope that God will stretch it to full capacity before I breathe my last.
Jubilant in Jesus,
Tom
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