So are you familiar with the oldie but a goodie Ray Boltz's ballad "Thank You"?
The image of a person arriving in heaven and being greeted with the people and stories of how lives intersected and were impacted through this one person's life. A crowd wishing to express their gratutude.
This song came to mind today as I pondered the picture in reverse...
A great crowd gathered around one person with joy and thanksgiving for the honor and privilege to have been a part of the magnificent story God was telling through this one person's life!
In the middle of this celebration, I saw one beautiful, smiling face...
THE MAYOR!!!!
Just in case you haven't ever read anything I've written before about our time in China...
I LOVE THIS BOY!
And I have longed for his family to find him and bring him home!
Our whole family prays for The Mayor and his family. Stories of our time with him in China are frequently repeated and often requested. Keziah has even asked, more than once, why we didn't just adopt The Mayor so he could have a home and a family?
So hard to explain this feeling...
...but...
...The Mayor is not my son.
I love him like children I have babysat for, teens I've worked with in dramas, Kids Choir kids, Children's Worship kids, friends of my own kids...lots and lots of kids. Some I categorize as part of a whole group. Some claim a special part of my heart. They may never know how dear they are to me, but I love silently watching them grow and mature even if from a far. Memories tigger spontaneous prayers. They have become my special kids.
The children we met in China in July have become part of that special-to-my-heart group...and yet at a new, more intense level all their own. "My" China kids are like family. I stepped into an orphange and discovered I'm an "Auntie" to 40-50 kids. The care, concern, and love I feel for these children daily! It truly hurts my heart! They are all so far away.
I must confess, though, the joy I experience each time I learn one of my sweethearts has been matched with their family, or when one of them comes home, or watching them grow and blossom through cyber images and the typed stories from their new families...
...Y'all! I struggle to find words to express the overwhelming, emotional flood of Joy, pure, unfettered, boundless JOY!!!
My best comparison would be the stories people tell about the emotional experience they feel at the birth of their first child. How suddenly they discover a new and different kind of love, joy, pleasure and pain that is indescribable and inecsapable for the rest of your life. This new realtionship changes you at the core, from the inside out, forever.
Yep!
That works!
That's what happened to my heart in China!
I can't watch it fade away,
I can't forget it,
I can't get over it,
and I don't want to!
So, back to The Mayor...
Yesterday, I began casually reading a recent blog posting from a team member who visited the same orphange in November...
I had to stop reading silently, I couldn't focus, I couldn't process the words, so I began reading it aloud to my two little girls in the room with me.
BIG UGLY CRYING!!!
Snot dripping from my nose, tear streaked cheeks, damped shirt from the flood, hypervenhilating as I attempt to read and comprehend each word!
The Mayor has a family!
He is loved and chosen!
He will come home!
Let's just say, that blog post has created quite a celebration!
I've tried to warn the family...
PARTY AT YOUR HOUSE!!!
...once this extroverted, social butterfly lands.
So my mind created that beautiful new imagery today...
all the lives of all the people who have loved The Mayor...
surrounding this boy in the throne room of his Heavenly Father, his Big Daddy God...
a celebration of thanksgiving for the honor and priviledge of being a part of The Mayor's chapter in God's story!
All these precious children and the stories God is writing through their lives, the beauty mingled with the broken pieces, rising from the ashes...I am so humbled to watch the pages turning before my eyes and witness mysteries unfolding...so many...too numerous recount them all...too complexly intertwined to unravel...and yet...so many unfinished...so many waiting to be told.
The only ending I can find for this post is ask a question...
DO YOU WANT TO GO TO CHINA?
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