Passports

So, it seems that the journey to get our Ren boy is also becoming a personal journey back through places of my own story.  There are many things I feel God whispering to me in the midst of this whole process, and one of them is that this adoption isn't just about bringing another child into our home.  It's also about remembering the child that I used to be, and how that little girl and her story impacts the woman that I am today.  

And as I've felt God nudging me back into places of my past, I've told Him, "Hey, wait...this isn't about ME.  This is about me trying to help a boy who needs a home.  This is about our son."

And He answers and says, "Oh yes, child...but it's about you too."

Hmmm. He always seems to have more in store for us than we originally thought.

Anyhow, I was thinking about all of this a few days ago when I pulled my shiny new passport out of my desk drawer.  It came in the mail while we were on vacation.  I stroked it and admired it.  Then I opened the front cover and looked at the photo of myself... 

30 year old Lib.

I proceeded to flip through its clean, crisp, blank pages.  No stamps, no stories. Not yet. I realized that the first stamp in my new passport will be CHINA. And then I thought about the fact that China is not a country I've ever really desired to go...not until now. And that got me thinking about the places I have been and my old passports.

The last passport I had expired a few years ago. I got it when I was seventeen...

17 year old Lib.

This passport took me on youth group mission trip to Dublin, Ireland. It took me on a summer study abroad trip to Italy before my junior year of college. It took me to Fiji on my honeymoon. It took me to Mazatlan, Mexico for Chris's and my one-year anniversary. As I look at the photo of the seventeen year old me, it feels like such a long time ago,   and I'm mindful of all the places I traveled, both physically and emotionally, with that passport. And then I started wondering about the passport I had even before this one.

And there it was...lying the bottom of my desk drawer...and this is the girl I saw peering back at me as I opened the front cover...

10 year old Lib.

This is the passport I got in preparation to move to England. I remember the day my mom took my brother and I to get these photos taken. I don't think I really understood what a passport was at the time. A few months after this passport was issued, we left our lives in Atlanta, GA and boarded a British Airways flight bound for London, England. Gatwick Airport was the first stamp in my first passport...the first of many to follow. Spain. Greece.  Sweden. Denmark. Holland. Germany. Austria. Belgium. France.  Canary Islands.  

The four years that my family lived in England were during a very formative time in my life. The exposure to different people, languages, and cultures at an early age changed me forever. Moving back to the states after those four years was one of the most difficult times in my life. When we returned to the U.S., I felt like an outsider in my own country. I felt different from all of my American friends and I felt like I couldn't share pieces of my past with them. Over time, I learned to be careful about who I shared that my part of my story with because it only seemed to make me feel misunderstood and alone.  When I shared things about my life in Europe, most of the responses I heard were along the lines of, "well, if you like it so much over there, why don't you just go back."  

I know there will be so many places where our son will probably feel misunderstood and alone.  He will be different and those differences will be difficult, if not impossible, to hide.  But I want him to feel loved and cherished for those differences, because those differences are what make him unique and special.  I hope I can do everything in my power to celebrate these differences, rather than let them become a source of aloneness for him.

My overseas experience cultivated a love of travel and overseas-life that is a significant component of my desire to adopt a child from a different country. I would love the chance to live overseas again one day. I don't know that this hope will ever be fulfilled, but in some way, it seems like bringing our boy home will be a bit like bringing the overseas to us. I'm starting to see that maybe God planted this desire in my heart for this very purpose.  

During the drive to pick up Tess from school this afternoon, I was listening to a song by Greg Laswell. Towards the end of the song, he sings,

Yeah, it's well worth the time that it's taken to get here now.

Those lyrics feel true to where I'm at today.  Each stamp in my  passport is a part of where I've been...a part of the journey that God has written into my story. It's taken my whole life to bring me to where I'm at now, and I'm seeing even more that God doesn't waste a thing.  He uses each of our experiences to shape our desires and prepare us for the amazing things He wants to do through us.  I never dreamed that China would be a stamp in my passport...but like I said earlier...


He always seems to have more in store for us than we originally thought.