Day 90: Laughing in the Louvre

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1 esv

If you’d told me seventeen years ago that one day I’d get to visit Paris with my daughter, I’d have thought quietly to myself that you were probably off your rocker. If you’d told me seventeen years ago that one day my daughter would look up at me with a twinkle in her big, beautiful brown eyes after viewing the actual Mona Lisa painting in the Louvre and exclaim, “Mom, this is awesome!”, I’d have questioned out loud if you’d been smoking something medicinal. I just couldn’t imagine as a forty-year-old single woman lugging a past full of foolish choices that God would lavish me with the undeserved gift of motherhood when I was fifty years old. To my pre-adoption-miracle ears that would’ve sounded like trying to catch a Hail Mary pass on a snowy Saturday wearing gloves slathered in mayonnaise!

At forty, I simply couldn’t allow myself to dream of a future with enough restoration in it to include a family of my own. Not after more than a decade of whopper relational mistakes on my end. By then I didn’t think I could deal with what I assumed would inevitably be crushing disappointment. When you’ve lived the “hope deferred makes the heart sick” aspect of Proverbs 13, it’s hard to hang onto the “a desire fulfilled is a tree of life” part. So I learned to effectively pour cold water on the embers of hope in my own heart that someday a child might call me “Mama,” or that someday I might get to shop for colored binders and thick reams of notepaper and Elmer’s glue so that my child’s backpack would be filled with all the requisite items necessary for their first day of school, or that someday there might be a stocking with a child’s name embroidered across the top hung on my fireplace mantel at Christmastime.

Even though I brought her home from Haiti quite a few years ago now, I’m still tempted to pinch myself that this extraordinary little girl calls me “Mama.” That I have the pure joy of walking down the school supply aisles in Target with my chattering daughter every August now and can’t help but smile when she asks sweetly if she can pretty please get a pink binder—even though it’s not one of the required colors—because it’s her most favorite color ever. And the fact that we hung up those hand-embroidered stockings with the names “Missy” and “Mom” on our fireplace mantel a little later than usual this year didn’t make me heartsick either because we got to spend the last week in November—when we normally decorate our home for Christmas—in Paris where I watched the child I’d all but given up hoping for skip down the marble hallways of the Louvre after consuming a chocolate crepe bigger than her head from a sidewalk vendor who proclaimed sincerely, “Madame, your daughter is trés belle!” as I was counting out the francs to pay him.

I don’t have the energy to guard my heart from disappointment anymore because I’m far too busy being gobsmacked by God’s redemptive kindness. That doesn’t mean disappointment never comes to my door. It just means that our Creator-Redeemer is up to, well, redeeming things in our lives, and when our eyes focus intently on the ways He’s doing that, the disappointments pale in comparison.

• What/who is the biggest example of God’s redemptive kindness in your life?
• Where are you pouring cold water on hope?
• How can you intentionally start praising God for all He is redeeming in your life?