Two Months Ours and Daddy Love

I'd like to tell you a story that took place exactly 2 months ago. We were in China to adopt our 3rd daughter, our 7th child. We had landed in Shanghai and crashed in our hotel 15 hours prior.  As the process goes, we had met our guide at 9:00am and were driven to a governmental office. We had adopted from China once before so we knew there would be a few papers to sign before we would meet our daughter. Dan had left the room with a worker to go pay the donation/ransom and as happens quite frequently with adoptive families, on his way back he was led past the room where she was sitting. He came down the hall and into our conference room just ahead of her and only had time to utter a sentence before we met her.

 He could have said many things: "She's here," She's on her way," or  "I just saw Willow." Instead, with his voice choked with emotion, he said, "She's beautiful!" Beautiful: this girl who had been confined to a bed and a wheelchair, this girl who had a shaved head, this child who had bent limbs beyond what we had prepared for. And he was right; She was so beautiful and so courageous. In her short life-time she had been through  much pain and loss and yet what her Daddy had seen immediately was not her past or even her present but instead he saw her future: His Daughter living under his care. 

 She didn't know it yet but in her daddy she had met someone who would be a friend for life, an advocate for her, her biggest fan.  She might one day walk or she might stay confined to a wheelchair; she might one day go to college or she might struggle her whole life with reading; she might accept the love we offered quickly or she might reject us and keep her heart hidden. What she has yet to learn is that it won't matter to her Daddy. He loves her regardless of anything she does. She is beautiful in the eyes of her daddy and she always will be.

Happy Father's Day to All the Adoptive Daddies.

"Oh how great is the love the Father has lavished upon u,s that we should be called children of God and that is what we are!"  1 John 3:1