Before I Called You Mine

by Nicole Deese

“The way to shape a child’s heart is through love. And the way to shape a child’s mind is through literature. When you read to a child, you accomplish both.”

Right now your child is sitting across the world in an orphanage, waiting for you, too. You may not know your child’s name yet or what their face looks like when they laugh or cry, but God has already gone before you in this. He’s already connected your heart to theirs in a way only He can. I know the wait can feel excruciating while on this side of things, but it’s not in vain. There is purpose in the waiting, Lauren. Don’t allow yourself to lose sight of that.”

It was like all your struggle and sacrifice to get to that point was nothing in comparison to the reward of your faith in Him. It made me believe that He might have a plan for my life, too. That maybe the very things I’ve been so afraid to say yes to all these years are the very things He wants me to trust Him with.”

I’d spent a lifetime logging her lack of maternal characteristics and not nearly enough time on the unique qualities she did possess as my mother. Her absence had shifted and humbled my thinking, or perhaps I owed this shift in thinking to the many prayers God had been answering over the last few weeks. Whichever the case, I no longer wished her to be someone she wasn’t; I simply wished her here.

An invisible red thread connects those destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but it will never break.’”

the doorway directly in front of me would soon reveal the child who had grown in my heart since before I’d

known her face, since before I’d called her mine.

But that, I’d learned, was adoption in a nutshell, a recipe for all things bittersweet. In the same mixing bowl were often heaping amounts of celebration and challenge, gratitude and grief, hope and heartache.