when your children start asking "why?"

Why didn't you come get me?

Another question with no answer.  The words hang in the air.  I pray to God to give me an answer for the unanswerable.  She is waiting with her eyes locked unto mine.  These are the moments when I wish I could go back and rewrite history.  I wish I could have been there the moment she arrived on this planet.  I wish that as she drew her first breath my hands were wrapped around here chest.  But that is not the reality that we must face together.  And so we sit and I think of a way to explain to a six year old things that I barely understand myself.

I love the family that God has made for me to mother.  It destroys all reason and logic.  Biological and Adopted children from multiple continents arranged in mismatched order.  It is beautiful and it is challenging.  Our family does not fit into a mold.  There are no picture books that nicely explain us.

It is a valid question.  For five years she waited for a forever family to come.  Five years of waiting and watching other babies come and go.  The story line is becoming clearer in her mind.  She realizes that while she waited , her younger sister came home.  And then she waited some more.  She wants to know why.  She wants to know what took us so long.  She wants to know why we didn't find her sooner.

And so we walk into these unknown waters desperately clinging to our heavenly Father.  We don't know the whys of the past, but we can trust that He had not forgotten.  (Isa 49) We can trust His promises.  ( Psalm 145) He is working all things together for our good to bring Him glory and praise. (Rom 8)  He knows the plans for us and they are to prosper us and not to harm us, to give us a hope and a future. (Jer 29)  He loves us with an everlasting love.  (Jer 31) He is our Refuge and our Rock to stand on when the world makes no sense.  (Ps 18)

I remind her of who He is.  I remind her that I love her.  I remind her that we are family and though we cannot know all the whys of the past, her future with us is forever.  And then I remind my own heart of all the same promises.