readers, meet leslie. i've talked about her before. once when i put a bottle of bubbly into my fridge and once when i took it out to toast with her.
i could go on and on about this woman, but instead of gushing about her, today i am going to gush with her. as i write, she is up in the air headed for ethiopian soil. that's right, my dear sweet friend left today and will fly through the night (making a few stops) to end up in ethiopia tomorrow evening. she is on the journey of a lifetime.
she and her equally fantastic hubby (for real, he was an urban education legend in chicago and now is the principal of a school in iowa) are about to meet their new daughter. baby girl is about to meet her momma and daddy for the first time. i tingle and tear up as i write that. momma and daddy are about to meet their daughter. sniffle, sniffle. can i get a tissue, please?
if you are a praying type, please join me in praying for them. you see, they get to meet her, they get to hold her and then they have to leave her. i almost can't stand it. after they meet sweet baby girl, they go before the judge, possibly meet members from baby girl's family and then they come back home to wait some more. a few weeks after this initial appointment, they will do it all over again to pick her up.
at home in iowa, are their two sweet boys, oliver and eli. they are waiting just as patiently in the care of their grandparents.
i can't do justice to how i feel about all of this, but let me just say that i am ecstatic, anxious, sweaty palmed, teary...
cue a story that i suggested i would share with you a long time ago but never got around to until right now- i am part of an email based prayer group. excuse me, what?
well, you see a few years ago, back when e was a babe i was part of a bible study at my church in chicago. it was an unusual group as our church was filled with lots of young people. in fact, the majority of the 200 or so people that attended the church were singles. eventually, those singles married, and eventually those marrieds had babies. i was the momma to baby 5 or 6 in the whole church. i'm not kidding. anyways, it wasn't your typical church and certainly not the typical bible study. we were all new moms and we were all trying to figure the whole thing out together, with God. at the end of year one, our little group grew from 6 moms to 14 moms. and from there it continued to grow. about the time i moved to the burbs, several of the other moms that i was close with moved to other places as well. a few of them remained in the city. but the common factor was that we missed each other. for about 2 1/2 years we had studied the word together, played together, prayed together, celebrated birthdays, shared the births of subsequent children... basically, we did life together. it was beautiful. and then it all changed. we found ourselves missing each other a great deal.
after a while a few of us came up with a plan. we decided that we needed to find a way to keep up with each other regularly and that we missed knowing that we were being covered in prayer each week. that was the birth of the on-line prayer group. and so now, 3 1/2 years later, we pray together via email. each week we send out a little update and our current praises and prayers. we compile the list, send it out with a typed prayer and then commit to praying for each other throughout the week. it is a gift beyond measure.
leslie is part of that group. and so for me, this isn't just my friend getting to meet her daughter, this is my friend who has intimately invited me into her God story. i've been blessed with the opportunity to see the entire story unfold, week by week, year by year. as leslie rejoices at how far God has brought them from taking those first steps and anxiously awaits the day she gets to lay baby girl's little body into her already linened crib, i get to participate.
and it's funny, because anytime that i wonder about the mystery of prayer, i think of sweet leslie. i think of baby girl. i see how God let me in on that story and how mathew 18:19 plays out...
when two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, my father in heaven goes into action. and when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that i'll be there. (the message translation)
because of my participation in this journey, i not only get to rejoice with leslie, but i also get to rejoice with my Father. in addition, i get this confidence in the power of prayer. from what i've seen, i know that prayer isn't always met with the answer we want or the path that we might have chosen, but God is always there. it has also been clear to me that His answer and His path is always better than anything we might imagine.
and so tonight, i ask you if you would join me in the mystery and beauty of prayer. my sweet leslie hates to fly. seriously. i'm also pretty sure that the caretakers at the orphanage might have to break leslie's hands in order to get baby girl back. i can feel her heart break for the family that is giving her this gift of life. i can feel her nerves as she stands before a judge and pledges to care for this child. i can feel her ache as she misses her boys back home. that's a lot of praying, but i'm confident that the God who planted the seed to adopt in leslie and jake's head, the God who walked them down this path, the God that chose this baby girl for these parents and siblings, that God... He's listening and He'll be there.
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