Today we are on the first leg of our trip to Haiti...
I am a lot little nervous and way excited. We will be working in various capacities at the Hands and Feet Ministry and Orphanage for the week... so I basically get to spend my days loving on sweet kiddos! Excited and grateful is an understatement.
Matt and I have talked a lot this week about our expectations - our hearts - going into this. I spent a short time in orphanages and a refugee camp in the Czech Republic right after high school with my church... I loved my time there and walked away knowing, even more so, that I would adopt one day. But this time around, despite not being a "mother" quite yet, I feel like I'm going in with a more maternal heart. I feel it. I think it will be harder this time, for me... To look at these children and know that I could really, truly take them home with me. I am no longer a teenager or a care-free college student. I am an adult. A grown woman. I have a spouse, a home, a real-life, big-girl job. And most of all, I have the capacity in my heart to love them all the days of their lives. I do. I would love them with every fiber of my being. Perhaps I'm setting myself up for some majorly-tearful goodbyes, but it is a fact that my heart can't ignore. I could do something.
My heart is already aching for these children that I've yet to meet. I have cried big, fat tears on my drive home this week after hearing the lyrics to a new favorite song of mine.
Matt and I have talked a lot this week about our expectations - our hearts - going into this. I spent a short time in orphanages and a refugee camp in the Czech Republic right after high school with my church... I loved my time there and walked away knowing, even more so, that I would adopt one day. But this time around, despite not being a "mother" quite yet, I feel like I'm going in with a more maternal heart. I feel it. I think it will be harder this time, for me... To look at these children and know that I could really, truly take them home with me. I am no longer a teenager or a care-free college student. I am an adult. A grown woman. I have a spouse, a home, a real-life, big-girl job. And most of all, I have the capacity in my heart to love them all the days of their lives. I do. I would love them with every fiber of my being. Perhaps I'm setting myself up for some majorly-tearful goodbyes, but it is a fact that my heart can't ignore. I could do something.
My heart is already aching for these children that I've yet to meet. I have cried big, fat tears on my drive home this week after hearing the lyrics to a new favorite song of mine.
Don't lose heart
Don't forget
This world is not our home
There's a better place where we belong
This place of heartache and strife and orphans and widows and poverty and suffering. It's not our home. Thank you for that, Lord.
Lauren
Lauren
Lauren, you are amazing and such an example to me! I know you are going to make an amazing mother one day and I would feel the same exact way that you do in that situation. It would be SO HARD to leave those kids. You have a great heart.
ReplyDeleteGive schneaky Chnider a hug and a piece of chocolate for me. You will love it there and not ever want to leave. I'll be praying for you both!!!
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