Already Good

We pulled up and I could feel my heart begin to race.  My stomach tightened as I saw the large gates of her orphanage open.

I was mostly worried about our little one.  How was she going to react to the environment she had left just a few days before returning?  Would she want to stay?  Would she be scared to leave?

We knew it could be the hardest thing we’ve ever done, but we, as Esther’s parents, needed to see it.  We needed to feel the gravity of loss that she had experienced in her short life.  We needed more information in order to fight for her from the proper stance…armed with knowledge…no matter how painful.  So we went.  We made the two hour trip to the city she was found in, and now here we were, standing in front of the place that housed my wide eyed beauty for her entire life.

We introduced ourself to the orphanage assistant director, who’s voice we recognized as the “man on the other side of the camera” in the videos of our little.  I had only watched those videos one bajillion times…so when he spoke I knew it was him.

He led us into the orphanage and we began our tour.  I could have never known what my eyes would see and my heart would behold.  I was not prepared.

It was hot inside, like the kind of hot that feels like there’s a wet rag over your mouth and you’re breathing through it…sort of like living in Louisiana with just a ton more humidity.  We were drenched before we even headed up the steps to the first floor.

I could physically feel my wee one tensing up in my arms and could feel the change in her breathing…as her breaths got shorter and shorter her face shifted to sheer worry.  She began to fret under her breath.

We were shown to the first room, her “classroom”, where a teacher, nannies and her “class” waited to see her.

Y’all…. our girl was the OBVIOUS FAVORITE of this place.  Every child ran out yelling her name and laughing…the nannies called her name and giggled as they did it.  These were her people…..and she had lived here 3 days before this day.  It is all she knew.

I sat her down inside the classroom…she looked at the kids and the nannies and then back at me and she lost it.  She started crying and screaming with her hands held up to me.  My heart lept and let out a huge hallelujah at the sight of my little one wanting no one but me.

I know that sounds selfish…but the truth is I needed it and so did she.  There needed to be a moment where I clicked in her heart as her safe place.  And at that moment it happened.  I swept her back up and walked her into the hall to calm her down.

From that point on, no one could come near my zesty one.  She would scream and swing her arms at the site of anyone walking in her direction.

It was unbelievably beautiful and made me so proud.

Next, we were led into the the room where Esther slept, the “crib room”.  As I walked in, I was side swiped by grief.  They led us to her sleeping spot…and when I saw it I broke.  It was a wooden bed with wooden slats…that’s it.  No mattress, no pillow, no cushion.  Wooden, hard and cold.

She took one look at that bed and began crying.

I held her beside it and we both wept.  It was such an honor to grieve with her.

I whispered “I’m sorry” into her ear over and over again.  Because the truth is, I was sorry.  I was sorry that she had been here for 2 1/2 years.  I was sorry for what my heart was seeing as her reality.

Room after room after room, filled with kids, doors barricaded, laying on the concrete floor staring at the ceiling.

460 kids.

460.

My one was one of 460.

The scope of the brokenness threatened to overwhelm my already fragile soul.

As we wandered through the massive building, we were instructed to simply step over the kids that laid in the hall, disabled and unable to move on their own.  Step over them.  How?  How could this be real?

We passed a room and I could hear a swell of baby cries coming from behind the door.  So I opened the door and went in.  It was clear that this was not part of the tour, they had not offered to show us what was behind door number one…but I didn’t care.  I was drawn like a magnet towards that room…my heart searching for knowledge of my now-clinging-to-me darling.  She was there as a baby, brought to the orphanage at 2 months old.  I needed to see her beginnings, where she spent her days as an infant.

I pushed open the door.  I could feel my heart in my throat, threatening to jump right out of my chest.  Multiple babies per bed, laid short ways so that they could fit.  As we walked through the rows of beds, tears streaming down both our faces, I noticed that the babies heads were all shaped like my Esther’s, and then I saw the cause of it: the bars.  Their sweet heads were shoved through the bars.  I broke.

It was all too much.  I felt an overwhelming urgency to get her out of that place.

We headed out of the orphanage and I was quietly begging for it to stop, for it to be over…this is my stop…can I get off here? I was thankful that we were headed toward the exit.

“When Yue Yue came the journalists all came out to see her.  She is famous,” the assistant director said flippantly, shaking me out of my panic.  This was why everyone knew her.

Our guide translated to us what he said.  We wanted to know more.  What did he mean?  Why did journalists come out to see her?

Our guide asked questions and they talked back and forth for a few minutes.

“When she was dropped off, journalists and news stations came out to tell her story.  They came and took her picture and told her story as a way of telling the whole city not to do this…not to abandon their babies.  She was used to teach a lesson.”

I felt my heart swell with pride and the reality of HOW MUCH LIKE JESUS that was…that in the midst of absolute, overwhelming oppression our little one’s brokenness had already begun being redeemed.

Good had already come from her devastating loss.  

Jesus had already done a work through her, in the state that He had found her.  Broken, abandoned, orphaned and an outcast of society, but in His Kingdom she was already important, she had already served a purpose.

I looked at her and knew that this little life, just like her sister’s, was a massive gift that I had been given to steward.  

And as we left I felt that all that I had seen that day…it had a place.  I could place it at the feet of Jesus and worship Him in the grief, knowing that even before I wrapped her in my arms, she was the apple of His eye.  His goodness had already been present in her life.

Man am I thankful for a God that begins the redemptive work in our lives before we have our act together, who sees the earth shattering potential of even our hardest places.  I am thankful that He found me smack dab in the middle of my hard place and chose, in that state, to use me.

If you don’t know Jesus, friend, I encourage you to seek Him.  If your heart hasn’t tasted and seen that He is too good for words…find Him as quickly as you can.  He’s not far…he’s leaning into your life, fingerprints all over it already.