Day 4: No More Barriers

When the angels had left them and returned to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go straight to Bethlehem and see what has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” They hurried off and found both Mary and Joseph, and the baby who was lying in the manger. After seeing them, they reported the message they were told about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary was treasuring up all these things in her heart and meditating on them. Luke 2:15–19

Since I filled you in on mine and Missy’s adventure in potty training (and all the toilet paper that came with it), I may as well fill you in on April 14, 2014—another adventurous day in our history, and one I consider the second most important day in my life (second only to the day I met Jesus). Why? Because it’s the day I brought Missy home from Haiti.

Because of Haiti’s proximity to the US—it’s only about a 90-minute flight from Miami—I had the privilege of visiting Missy multiple times during our two-year adoption process. Unlike some of my friends who’ve adopted from distant countries like China, Africa, or Russia, and didn’t get to meet their kids until they traveled to their birth country to bring them home at the very end of the adoption process, Missy and I had the opportunity to spend two, three and even four days at a time together before our adoption was finalized. She’d even gotten into the habit of calling me “mama blan” (which means white mama in Creole), but since she associated me with short visits and presents, I think what she really meant by mama was “Santa with wider hips!” And since we had the blessing of establishing some semblance of relationship over the twenty-four months prior to April 14, 2014, I wasn’t expecting such a huge shift to take place in my heart on our “Gotcha Day” (the day she actually came home to Tennessee). I mean, I knew that finally getting to bring her home was going to be significant . . . I just didn’t know it was going to be seismic.

I can remember almost every detail of that day. The way she grabbed my hand and her eyes got really wide when the plane began to taxi toward takeoff in Port-au-Prince. The relief that washed over me when we stepped off the plane in Miami, on US soil for the first time. The way she giggled and wiggled in the long line at Customs. The peace that kept me grounded while it was taking so long for our paperwork to get processed in the Homeland Security and Immigration office that it looked like we were going to miss our connecting flight home to Nashville. The way she fell asleep on my lap once we finally made it on board and got settled into the back of that tiny plane. I can vividly remember the way we could hear our welcome home crowd cheering after we got off the plane in Nashville and began to walk toward baggage claim. We could hear them long before we could see them! I remember the way a famous country music star walking near us arrogantly assumed the boisterous crowd was cheering for him only to be shocked when they completely ignored him and his entourage because they only had eyes for a sweaty middle-aged mom and her newly adopted four-year-old.

But what I remember most—the memory that’s the absolute highlight in an entire day of highlights—is the way I felt that first night at home, sitting on the bed next to her after she’d fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion. I remember being so overwhelmed with love for this little thirty-four-pound peanut that I had the literal, physical sensation of my chest expanding. The feelings of love and joy and gratitude and fulfillment were so big and so visceral, I felt like my ribs had to move over and make room.

I realized later that our first night at home was the first time there was no barrier between us. No reality that I had to leave her in the orphanage and fly back to America. No potential of yet another adoption delay. Nobody translating English to her or Creole to me. No lost Internet connection. Not even a dear friend holding a welcome sign or fervently praying. It was just the two of us. That’s when the profound gift of parenthood matured from conceptual to concrete. From my longing for a child to a little girl under a Pottery Barn duvet whose eyelids fluttered while she dreamed and beautiful brown skin that smelled like cinnamon and coffee. Watching my daughter sleep that first night is among the purest, truest things I’ve ever experienced.

And Jesus’ incarnation—when He left His celestial home and came to the world He created as God in the flesh—is infinitely better than that first night I experienced with Missy in our home. It’s the moment the barrier between heaven and earth—between God and His people—dissipated. There in the wide-eyed wonder of a teenaged mom named Mary—who had a much more unconventional experience when it came to becoming a mom than I did!—we see the miracle of God with us begin to unfold.

• Do you tend to be more of a concrete thinker or a creative processor?
• How often do you ponder the miracle of an accessible Savior—that we can intimately know Jesus?
• Why do you sometimes forget that there’s no barrier between you and God anymore? How might life be different for you if you approached God with the confidence that there are no more boundaries between the two of you, and that He delights over you, even as you sleep?