My Angel of Encouragement

I ended up taking the girls up to see our boys basketball team play in the state semi-final game yesterday afternoon. Kind of a spur-of-the-moment decision. They actually did amazingly well for me, despite having to hike quite a long distance from the parking lot to the stadium through the rain. We were loaded down with trail mix, fruit snacks, princess sippy cups, and several pairs of extra Dora undies - how can you go wrong with all of that "essential" gear, right?

The biggest blessing of the entire trip happened after the game though. We had hiked back to our car, and I was just about ready to put the girls in their carseats when it became apparent that the man whose pick-up was parked next to us also needed to get in to his car. There was one awkward second where we didn't know who should get into their car first since we'd both arrived at our cars at the exact same time, you know? And then I said, "Go ahead, it'll take me awhile to buckle these two little ones in." And he graciously insisted, "You go ahead now. I'm not in any hurry." So, I did, and as I was buckling the girls in then, we started talking. He asked me where I was from; I told him. He said he was at the game because he is friends with the refs, and that he refs too. I said he must have some pretty thick skin to be a ref, having people yelling at you all the time about calls they disagree with. On and on our conversation went...He told me about his daughter in college in London. He asked if we planned on having any more children. And I told him that we're in the process of adopting a little one from Ethiopia...

And the man LIT UP!!! He was SO incredibly EXCITED for us! It was like he was more excited about it all than I was (if that were possible) :) After he'd digested that bit of news, he said something like, "Now you prepare yourself for all of the comments you're going to be getting, bringing that baby home" (Oh. I just realized that I forgot to mention that this man is a black man. Sort of important to understand the next part of the conversation). And I said something like, "You know, I'm not worried about the comments for myself, just concerned about people saying things that will hurt this child." And he said something like, "Well, this child will hear hurtful things, you can't do anything about that. But, you just keep right on loving him or her and believing in him or her, and telling that baby that he or she is somebody special and everything will be fine with that baby." He went on to say, "Just look at this. Here we are having this great conversation in the middle of a parking lot. Neither one of us is afraid to share with the other. A lot of people are afraid of what they don't understand. But, you're not. You'll be a good mama to this {Ethiopian} child."

We concluded our conversation by wishing each other well, and thanking each other for the conversation. And I drove out of that parking lot feeling SO INCREDIBLY BLESSED, and SO INCREDIBLY THANKFUL that My Father put that particular man in my path to encourage, to reaffirm that this IS from Him, that Nathan and I CAN parent this child, and there ARE people out there, even/especially people of color, who support our decision to adopt a child from another culture, a child who will look different from us on the outside, but who is a child of the same God and Father, made in HIS image as are we all.

{Good kind of SIGH}. SO thankful for my angel of encouragement!