Family

The open air truck backed into the orphanage.  To say I was unprepared is an understatement.

It had been 5 years since my eyes had seen an orphanage…the last one held my own baby, my Liv, sights that can not be un-seen, heaviness that has been hard to shake.  I had walked the grounds of her make-shift home, her humble beginnings, shaky legged and overwhelmed.

I did not make the connection of the significance until my feet hit the dusty ground in that Haitian orphanage.

The babies came around the corner and I felt the blood leave my face…I felt the familiar crushing weight of heart break, of loss, of feeling unable to do enough.

And these babies, they were hungry, I mean really hungry.  Skin and bones they danced and sang and giggled and hung around my neck.  All the while I was drowning in my own heart…frantically searching for the surface to come up for air.

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The clock struck midnight… and it was January 1.  The dawn of a New Year.  A chance to start clean, a day filled with expectancy and lists of things hoped for in the year to come.

But most of all…. when midnight came…YES DAY.  The greatest day in the Hammett family.  The day that Liv gets to decide what we do.  Anything she dreams up or asks, within the law and the tight limits of our bank account, gets a YES!  We can’t say no.

And my little nugget…she gets it now y’all.  She ain’t dumb.

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Dear Esther.

I’ve been thinking of you all day today.  Weird to say about a person I’ve never seen, but feel I deeply know.

Oh how I am longing to see your face for the first time.  I know that seeing your face is going to turn my world upside down…your face will launch an all out war to get you home…seeing your face will set change in motion, not just for your life, but for ours – your waiting-on-the-edge-of-our-seat-family.

We are so ready to bring you in…into the chaos that is our normal… into the silly games of hide and seek, the late night laugh sessions on your mama and papa’s bed, in on the conversations about Jesus, in on the early morning buzz to get your sister to school…we’re ready to have you all up in it.

This waiting on you thing is for the birds, if I’m being honest.  We have crossed all the t’s and dotted all of the i’s and we crossed the finish line of being “done” and “waiting” and now it’s catching up to me just how hard that is going to be.

But, I promise that while we wait we will seek our Father.

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You guys, Liv Nima is a straight hustler.  She’s got that thing…that spark that it takes to pull something off.

And she’s four years old.

She wanted to sell lemonade to raise money for her sister, Esther.  How cool right?  She got the idea from the neighbors down the street who assaulted us with lemonade pitches every time we went on a walk.  The first time she saw them she was intrigued and had a million questions about why they were doing it and how it all worked.  She was taking mental notes, hatching her plan for her own lemonade monopoly.

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You guys,  we’ve had a few doozy conversations in our household this week with our little four-going on fourteen- year old nugget.

And my responses…they spanned the spectrum from winning parent of the year to…well you be the judge.

It had been a long, very very hot day at the Peach Festival.  We had driven to the small town of Ruston (Hail to thee my Alma Mater) for their annual celebration of the peach.

To be honest, I didn’t do much celebrating.  It was so hot that I wanted to just sit down and cry.  At one point I hoisted myself into the concession stand to get a taste of the window-unit AC that they were selflessly hoarding.  It was hot y’all.  No shade.  No rest for the weary.

We went to dinner that night with friends.  Let me correct that…best friends, and their precious little one.

We were all chatting and laughing and the littles were blabbing to each other over their chicken strips when my precious one took a DEEP dramatic sigh to get the attention of the table.

All attention on her, she spoke.

“Gotta love the devil.”

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When Liv heard the news from her mama and papa that we were going to adopt a sister she was a mixture of emotions.

She was ecstatic to hear it right away!  Another little person in our house that she could team up with!  She was going to be a BIG sister!  She immediately began making plans.

“Is my sister going to be brown?” was the first question out of her mouth.

“Well, no ma’am she isn’t,” I said.

Her head hung down to the ground in a super dramatic charlie brown type stance.

“I want my sister to be from Africa,” she murmured out of the side of her mouth as she pouted.  ” I want her to be from the Congo.”

“Oh darlin’, I know you do.  But the Congo is closed to adoption right now.”

She sat there for a few seconds pondering that statement.

She looked up at me and said:

“Why???  Did they run out of babies or something??”

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Brent and I had decided that we were a one-kid family…we were content and felt whole with our little unit of 3.  Our little has the personality, spice and pizazz of 3 children…so she was more than enough for us.

We talked often of being “done” and how we would raise our little Congolese rascal to be a balanced, only child- that didn’t act like an only child. (insert eye roll because let’s face it she ACTS LIKE AN ONLY CHILD ALREADY)  We had grand plans!  It felt safe and secure and do-able.

One afternoon my phone rang and it was one of my heart-connected besties, Angel.  Our babies were raised in the same orphanage and slept on the same concrete bed as each other in the heart of Africa.  We are currently executing a modern day arranged marriage between my Liv and her Oaks.  They will make beautiful African babies for us.

“Hey.  Crazy story for you,” is how she started.

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Liv came into our room bright and early this morning.  After partying till 2:30 am as a fam we figured…”surely she will sleep in…”  Nope.

She came in at the butt-crack and walked to my side of the bed and tapped me until I grunted.

“Can I eat this for breakfast Mama?”

“Yes.” I said without even opening my eyes.

I had no clue what she was holding nor what was about to be ingested…

but my YES was on the table because it was better than exerting the energy to take a glance.

And so began our much anticipated….

HAMMETT FIRST ANNUAL ALL DAY YES DAY!

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When that tiny baby came screaming into earthly existence, everything changed.

All of heaven, wrapped in pink, brand new flesh.

The Savior had come and in the blink of an eye, salvation for all became possible.

The apple of His Father’s eye, Jesus, laid in a dirty feeding trough, awed over by some of society’s least likely candidates.

God’s entire, invisible nature…materialized.

“He (Jesus) is the radiance of the glory of God
and the exact imprint of his nature…”
Hebrews 1:3

God’s thumbprint.

All of God- packed inside the body of that baby.  His nature, His heart, His power, sovereignty and His plan for all man kind, materialized, brought to view….in plain sight.

Now with us, God, Immanuel.

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I put her backpack on her back and sent her towards the door for school.

She was beaming, ready for another day.

Not one question about why I was sending her out the front door in JUST her socks, underwear and panties and not a stitch of clothing.  Just her backpack and that beautiful brown skin.  Nude…with a back pack.

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