He Provides

I was sifting through clothes yesterday at Target, imagining how tall Baby Michael has gotten since I left him last.  (We call him Baby Michael , even though he is 4, because we have known of his existence since he was abandon on Fr. Michael's Delta site 3 1/2 years ago so he is still a baby in my mind.)  We receive Michael into our care from the time that we get to Uganda, so we need daily clothes for him, diapers, daily care products for him, his caregiver had said that he was squeezed into the last shoes I sent him, and he needs a suit for our hearing, so the list was quite long.

And I am sure that some moms know this feeling - you get into a store when it first opens, and you have a list, no children, and the store is almost empty.  And the store seems so huge, and because you are alone, you just get lost in your thoughts, or the details of the list, or something - anything.  Yesterday, I got lost in the shoe department.  I was staring at all of these children's shoes, and realized that there is a little boy in Uganda, who I am going to love for the rest of his life, but I had no idea what size shoe he wore.  I never had the chance to rub and tickle the bottoms of each toe, or kiss the ball of his foot, or pretend my fingers were a spider tickling up the length of his legs to tickle his belly.  Before bedtime most nights, I would rub lotion all over my children's fat little legs and all over their feet and toes, just giving them a little foot massage, working out any last bots of energy that might have been stored there. (My husband used to get REALLY jealous).  So many intimate bonding moments that were never shared with Baby Michael....

And before I could start to tear up, which is what would have happened had I been given one more second of vast Target solitude, my husband's aunt called.  She was just checking in, making sure that I was getting packed, was not panicked, and was mentally ready to go.  She reminded me to make sure that I bring a bunch of empty journals, so that I can gather as much information about Michael as I could, for my own records; his over bite, the way he runs, what makes him laugh, what scares him, what fabrics he prefers, anything I can see, so that I mentally start to bond with him immediately, and I can see patterns in behavior and start to figure this little guy out.  She talked about it enough that my Social Work degree and experienced popped into my head.  I have the perfect project - Case Study of Michael.  So I strolled out of the baby department, headed to stationary, and found the sweetest light blue baby book that said in big bold letters, "My first years 1-5".  So perfect.

And for some reason, I wanted to record yesterday mornings events, as a reminder to myself of God's Great Glory and my pathetic amount of FAITH.  One minute, I am standing in the shoe department.  Had I needed shoes for any of my children previously, I could have used my finger and found the shoes that would have been perfect, using the memories of their sweet feet against my hands.  And in the next moment, when my tired mind and anxious heart was going to get upset by the solitude that Baby Michael may have experienced before, God, in His Infinite Wisdom, sent people and things to relieve my worry and point me in the right direction.  

I know it might sound dumb, or trivial, but I had been in the baby section a dozen times in the past weeks, and had never seen this baby book, yet it was on the corner of a clearance end cap, with a sweet design that matched his bedspread, screaming "Don't worry Allison, you will have a ton of time with just him, in Uganda, to fill out this entire book, ask his previous caregivers those questions, gather information to help you along your journey...."

God is so good.  I may not have all of the answers to the Baby Michael puzzle RIGHT NOW (and everyone knows how awesome my patience is) but if all goes well during our hearing in Uganda, I can spend the rest of my life figuring it out, making up for lost time, and creating our own new little bonding moments.

Thanks for joining us on this crazy journey!  I cannot wait to share more of our journey with everyone.