This just in!!

Oh, the wonderful-ness of tasty new photos! I just got a handful from some amazing women. And I marveled...

I am amazed at seeing this little group of children running and playing in a park, activities which stand in stark contrast to the stories most people tell about international orphanages and foster homes. I came to adoption, I admit, with low expectations regarding the quality of care my child-to-be would have had--mostly because there are so many children and so few workers.

And now here is this child, with his 1 in 400,000 challenge, with his single kidney, only 6 weeks after returning to Beijing from surgery in the US, struggling to climb an inflated slide and getting help from a friend. T. wrote that he tried to climb and was passed by kid after kid--he is still recovering his upper-body strength--and he was getting frustrated, turning repeatedly to look at the nannies from the foster home. They remained still, snapping photos, capturing the story of his perseverance and rescue from a 5-year-old friend, reveling in his triumphant smile and his pride at conquering the heights before sliding back down, sending it all to a nervous woman hundreds of miles away who has no idea what is to come.

It makes me wonder what Mary thought. There was this moment, this blinding annunciation, the assurance that this was indeed the hand of God, the revelation of the Divine to His children and their children, the hope of rebirth--and then there was morning sickness and dizziness and family suspicion and Joseph's doubts and distance and nine long months of waiting, waiting, waiting...did she despair at how to get ready to rear the Son of God? What did she try to prepare for? Did she want her house to be in a certain order that was different because of the manner in which everything had unfolded? Was she horrified when everything started to happen and she couldn't get to a better place than a stable for the birth of God's Son? Did she feel that she had failed Him? What could she make of any of it? Was she harder on Joseph because of it?

They couldn't even know what was coming--the tribute, the stories, the flight for safety, the fear, the joy...did they come to trust that they could only live each day and that God was sovereign? What kind of blur was it? How many apologies did they make?

This bearing and rearing of children is too much for mere mortals...but look at that smile.