So, we are adopting a little boy from Uganda. We were matched with him almost exactly a year ago. If you don’t know the language, apparently “matching” means that a child has been selected for you to adopt. We received a picture of him. Not a very good picture. It was hard to make him out. So we got pretty excited and told people that we are expecting to be flying to Uganda soon and to bring him home quickly. We didn’t enroll the kids in the Upwards sports league and we talked to their teachers to make sure that they could miss time at school and not suffer being held back a grade. We began to purchase clothes and lots of other items for our trip. We were ready to fly to Uganda in the middle of February. Well we had a very hard time getting a court date so we didn’t end up going until August.
We flew out right after Vacation Bible School in the summer of 2011. All 5 Boyd’s flew 24 hours to get to Uganda. We spend 4 weeks in Uganda and we lost a lot of weight. All of us got a bacterial infection. At one hospital I was told the Eden had typhoid and malaria (she didn’t.) Will broke his arm. Our court date was cancelled. We were there 4 Sundays and only made it to church twice with all the sickness. It was crazy, wonderful, scary, eye opening, and so many other words. We grew closer as a family. We got to meet and spend 4 weeks with Silas.
Our court date got cancelled and we had to fly back to get the kids back in school and I had to get back to work. We had no idea how long it would be to see the story finish. A few weeks later Mindy flew back for a 1-2 week stay in which she would complete the adoption and bring him home by the beginning of October 2011. After 5 weeks and many, many roadblocks we needed Mindy back here. So she flew home again without Silas. She was able to be there to celebrate his first birthday.
It is now February 2012 and Silas is not with us. At this moment Mindy has prepared our case, again, to be presented to bring Silas home. She has spent a lot of time writing, gathering, talking on the phone, and investigating. So now we bring all this to the director of the Orphanage. Then the case will be reviewed within 30 days. At that time we are hoping to fly out and get him, finally to bring him home to live with us as a member of our family.
This is not an “update on the adoption” blog. This is a “what I have learned” blog.
We are God’s children. As my friend Art says, “God doesn’t have great-grandchildren.” I am a child of God. You are a child of God. God loves his children. We love Silas. He is not our’s biologically. He has been very expensive. It has been a lot of work. It has been all of my vacation time. It has been all of Mindy’s free time. It has meant driving my 99 Saturn for the rest of my life! He has been a lot of personal sacrifice for our entire family, our extended family, our church family, and many other people. But mostly it has been a sacrifice for Mindy and me.
So, after all of this sacrifice, do we still love him? Yes, of course. Do we love him as much as our biological children? Yes, of course. Is he worth the sacrifice? Yes, and much more. We ache for that funny little boy. We imagine him at our dinner table, stealing toys from Willy, and laughing at the kids. We imagine the mob scene the first time we introduce him to our family at church. The first time he meets his brand new grandpas and grandmas and cousins, and aunts and uncles. We can’t wait to get him here.
God worked so hard to adopt us. God sacrificed so much to adopt us. God is still in the process of adopting us. Through all the sacrifice and pain, we love Silas with all of hearts. Silas may never understand how much work, pain, and sacrifice it was for us to adopt him and that’s just fine. We don’t care about his appreciation. We just love him and want to be with him. We want to take care of him. We want to teach him about life, people, and God. We want him to experience his dreams. We want to nurture him and watch him grow. We want to love him with everything that we have.
I believe that God simply wants the same for each one of us. He wants to love us. He wants to care for us. He wants us to experience our dreams. He wants to nurture us. He wants to watch us grow.
If you think that Mindy and I are great because of our love and sacrifice for Silas, then you should look at God.
This is what is driving me lately. I want to be an adoption advocate for God. I want to be an orphanage director for God. I want people to be placed into the family of God. When their journey is over I want people to enter into their home of Heaven and not be left out. In our little church we have had 6 people adopted into God’s family this calendar year. I want that number to grow. I want to be an adoption advocate and I want my church to be adoption advocates. We need to help people get to the Heavenly Father and claim their room in God’s House.
If you have ever doubted God’s love for you...stop. What more could God do to prove that He loves you? What more could God do to prove to you that He has plans for you to prosper, find peace, and find wholeness? What more could God do? Just like we love Silas, God loves you all-in. He could not love you more. Please accept His love. Don’t block him from your heart. Don’t hide in shame. Don’t turn your back on Him out of arrogance. Open up your heart and let Him in. Accept the love of God in your life.
So, if you were planning on helping me with my quest to bring books to Pastor Ivan of the church connected to our orphanage, you need to act soon. I have 9 books lying here on my shelf. They are very good books. I am excited to get them to Ivan. However, I would be far more excited if I were bringing a whole suitcase full of books.
