.He Knows.

My fingers stroked the screen wishing they were stroking the curves of his cheeks or the curly q's of hair on his head. I saw his face again today, seven times in seven different ways. He was in the arms of a woman who has been such an encouragement to us on our journey. Her heart beats for Ethiopia and the lost babies there. Babies who know no daddy defender or mommy kisses. Babies who are starving not only for food but for the love of a family. And she met my son. She not only met him, but she snuggled him, stroked him, inspected him head to toe, kissed him, and whispered in his ear about us. And while this was a priceless, beautiful gift, and my heart soared at first as I poured over every word and examined every inch of every photo, soon I hit a wall of despair harder than ever before.

Hot tears burned my eyes and left a singed trail on my cheeks, sobs coursed through my body, and the ache was intensified 100%. In that moment I grew angry. I ran to my bedroom, leaving my children playing on the living room floor, and I screamed and cried at the top of my lungs to the One who I thought had turned a deaf ear, and a blind eye to my despair.

God, why don't you care? Don't you see how much I hurt? How this hurt is turning physical? I gasped, choking and sputtering on bitter tears as they flowed from my aching, weary eyes.

Why aren't You following my plan? Why have you chosen to keep Jamesy in Ethiopia longer? Why can't we celebrate his birthday and have him home for Christmas? Why? I screamed. Surely the neighbors even heard my cries.

You just don't understand my pain! I sobbed.

And then, unexplainably, my heart heard Him. In a brief moment of vivid clarity, I knew that I was screaming to the only One who really does understand my pain. My tears continued to flow as the Holy Spirit brought to mind the anguish God must have felt as He watched His tiny, infant Son being swaddled by the hands of an inexperienced teenage girl and the rough carpenter hands of her husband. How it must have caused him pain to watch His beloved Son being lowered into a dirty, cold manger when He Himself could have given Him the plushest coziest of cribs. How God's heart must have shattered into pieces at every painful snapshot of His growing boy, knowing full well, He could not bring Jesus home yet.

My heart soared with the knowing that God not only knows this pain, but He knows it first hand. He has experienced intense pain and longing for His son ten fold what I am experiencing, and He experiences my pain with me. He knows this pain. He loves me. He hurts with me. But He sees the big picture, and the beautiful redemption that is being painted for our family. He knows that it will be worth this pain, this agony, this heart ache.

It still hurts. It is still suffocating and even debilitating at times. But He cares and He knows, and He can handle this....and my despair.