We recently got pictures that one of the other Bethany mommas had taken when we visited the orphanage. It was by far my least favorite day of the entire trip. I didn’t want to bring him back to that place. I had a pit in my stomach. I didn’t want to put him down. I didn’t want him to think we were bringing him back there and leaving him. I wanted to see that place...and yet I didn’t want to see it. It was just overwhelming. I wanted to walk him out the doors and never look back.
But an amazing thing happened when we started looking through those pictures. Simeon was so excited. His eyes lit up. He smiled. He said “mom, that Simeons!” *as in my home*. My image of that place went from cold, sad & scary...to beautiful just like that. While it is not ideal for any child to live in an institution. While having caregivers in the place of a mom & dad, and being one of one thousand children cared for in a place should not be “normal” for any child anywhere, for 2294 days, this was the normal for Simeon. This was his home. He was not sad or scared when he saw his room or his bed. The faces of the women who cared for him did not bring fear, but smiles! He was excited to show me his toothbrush sitting in a cup on the counter, and the place he showered. He recognized the halls, and the paintings hanging in them. Each picture he saw brought joy. It was clear that he was loved, and as an adoptive momma there is really no better feeling in the world than to know that while your child was not in your arms he was loved.
It is hard to wrap my mind around God writing a story that begins with abandonment & 2294 days living in an institution. But in the midst of those days there was beauty. While that place seems cold, sad and scary from the outside looking in...God was [and is] in that place.
As I sent Simeon off to his first full day of school last week he was wearing his “Child of the King” shirt. I was reminded that while he has been my son [officially] for 125 days he has been a child of the King since before he was born. God was with him when he was left in that train station, while he was in the hospital, when he was admitted into the CWI and every day & night since. On November 13 he walked into my loving arms...but his life before that day was not without love. God brought him to a place that was safe. A place with people to care for him and food to eat. And while I wanted to walk out of that place and never look back, that place is a big part of Simeon’s life and to think that we will never again have to look at it or talk about it is just not fair & not healthy. If God is going to make beauty from ashes we have to be willing to go back into that place, to feel the feels, to talk about the joy and the pain. I have to let Simeon love that place & if the day comes I have to let him hate it too.
In the end I am reminded that the outcome for Simeon could have been much different if a place like the Shanghai CWI did not exist. He is my son because he was able to call that place home for the 2294 days before he became ours. He is alive today because there is a system in place that takes children found in train stations in China and gives them a home & food & medical care & people to care for them & I totally agree that this is not ideal, but I am going to praise God that He provides such a place. Because folks without that place, I would have missed this. His precious smile, his cute little giggle, the way he leans his head on my shoulder and says “I love you mother”, his stories that are long and super hard to understand [because they are mostly not English...but not really Chinese either] & the way he can make us all laugh till we cry.
So, I am going to choose to see the beauty in those 2294 days. God used those days [and the places and people who filled them] to bring one sweet little boy into a family and that friends is beautiful!!
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