I’m pretty sure I have always wanted to be a mom. Ever since my first trip to Ghana, I have really wanted to adopt. Being on this trip is already stirring that feeling inside me. After my first shift with Cedrick, I was ready to bring him home with me. Obviously, I have this next 11 months planned out, but what’s stopping me from adopting when I get home? When I went to Ghana, I was 20 years old and still in college. Now I could provide for a child. I’m pretty sure my parents are ready to be grandparents, and I doubt that this surprises them. PS. My parents are awesome!
I have encountered mothers here in the Philippines that are teaching me a lot as well. There’s Rona, who has a son named Joseph. I love these 2! They are inseparable. You can see that she would do anything for him, and that she works so hard to give him whatever his heart desires. This is usually Jollibee which is the Philippines McDonalds. I prefer McDonalds J I was surprised the other day when she shared with me that she had put him up for adoption when he was born. He spent about a month in an orphanage before she changed her mind. She cried every day during that month. There’s also a lady named Grace who works here who has 3 girls. She works so hard to provide for them. When we were at the Ateneo game and Samuela was in my lap, Grace kept reminding her to keep her legs together and to be a lady. What a great mother!
As I’ve been having this feeling stirring inside me, I have also spent a lot of time reading about mothers in the Bible. Mothers play such an important and honored roll in so many stories. The word mother is mentioned almost 300 times in the Bible. A story that has struck me is the story of Moses and his mother, Jochebed, found in Exodus 2. She does what she has to do to keep her son safe and to give him the best life possible. Stories of mothers doing ‘whatever it takes’ are all over the Bible, all over history, and throughout my family. What I’m learning though is that it doesn’t always look like we think it should. In Moses’ story, his mother gets to nurse and raise him, but for Pharaoh’s daughter, not as her own child. There are a lot of children with mother’s who make the choice to give them up. My small range of experience keeps me from fully understanding why that is the right choice. I’ve never had to decide what is best for a child. I don’t have to understand it though. I have to trust God. And I have to follow what His word tells me to do. James 1:27 says, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress.” I know that there will be children in all of these countries that I will want to bring home with me. I know that I have told a couple people that they can expect me to have 11 children when I get home. It was prophecied over me that I have a nurturing, mothering spirit. My team all call me ‘mom’ because I tend to feel the need to take care of everyone. I can’t help it. Pray for discernment and wisdom for me. I’m torn about adopting single. I’m torn about ripping children from their lives here. The babies aren’t the only ones calling out to me. Did you know that if you’re over 3 in the Philippines, the chances that you’ll be adopted are literally slim to none? Ripping a teenager out of her home, which is what the orphanage would be to them, and taking them to America may not be the best thing for them. I want to wait on God’s timing and not make emotional decisions that affect the lives of others. I want to learn to exhibit God’s love for them in the short time I get to be with them right now, and be patient and trusting that God has a plan for their life. I want to be thankful that I get to be used by God to make a difference in their life, even if it’s not through adopting right now. But I do want to be a mother. I want to be a mother to the motherless.
