I have to admit, I’m not really a “things” person. There aren’t many items in my home I would be heartbroken to lose. I’m attached to a few. My dinosaur cookie jar given to me by my brother, my elephant earrings Andrew brought back from Nepal, our boys’ lovies, and the ornament. A simple green ornament has hung on our tree for 12 years. It’s my most treasured possession.
12 years ago our friends threw Andrew and me an ornament shower for our wedding. It was perfect. As all our friends were in college, ornaments were budget friendly. The theme fit perfectly for our Christmas wedding and we all had a great time seeing the ornaments folks picked out. But one stood out. I’ll never forget pulling it out of the little green box. A handpainted Li Bien ornament. A traditional Chinese painting technique where glass objects are painted from within.
The ornament was from my best friend, Emily. She knew we felt burdened for orphans and the she knew the desire of our hearts to one day adopt a child from China. She knew that at only 20, Andrew and I had a least 10 years to go before that calling could become reality. And without hesitation or doubt, Emily gave us a gift. She gave us a promise that she believed this calling on our lives to be true. Knowing that 10 years would be a long wait, she gave us a reminder. Each year that ornament hung on our tree it was a reminder of the promise God had for our family.
Every year for the past 12 years I’ve carefully unwrapped the ornament and placed it on the tree. Our first few Christmases, Andrew and I shared feelings of of excitement and dreaming for the promises to come.
It wasn’t long, though, until those wide-eyed teenagers became adults with three toddlers. By all accounts we were adults, but we felt like small children standing at the edge of the sea, battered and bruised by circumstances, who each time they stood up would be knocked down by an even bigger wave. And every time we were knocked down, it seemed we grew a little further apart from each other and watched the promise of adoption float a little further out to sea.
So, in 2017 we completely closed the door to adoption. Because of personal circumstances in our lives, we shut the door. We mourned. And that year, I hung the ornament on our tree with tears in my eyes and bitterness in my heart for a calling lost.
But God was working. He was working in our cold and closed hearts. He was bringing our marriage back together. He was teaching us to work as a team. He was teaching us just how much stronger we could be if we would cling to each other and to Him when those waves came calling. He was warming our hearts and reminded us that the door we thought we had closed was actually cracked after all.
In 2018, Andrew and I hung the ornament with nervous anticipation. After months of feeling unsettled about our decision to close the door, we made room in our hearts for God to speak to us about adoption. We opened ourselves to the idea of hearing from Him. Was this still His plan for our lives? Could He breathe life into dead places? And of course, the answer was “Yes!”
In 2019 we hung the ornament with joy, knowing we were preparing to submit our application to Lifeline in February.
This year, 2020, we hung that ornament on our tree with a little girl’s face in mind. Our beloved Esme, long hoped for and dearly loved. The little girl who was prayed for, hoped for, and fought for long before she ever took her first breath.
And next year she’ll hang her ornament on the tree.
Emily probably didn’t know in 2008, just how much that simple ornament would come to mean to Andrew and I. Her kindness, like ripples in a lake, flowed outward. A simple token of faith gave me strength when I was weary-hearted.
So today I thank God for the little girl waiting on the other side of the world, for her birth parents who so bravely chose life for her, for my husband who was brave enough to open his heart back up to adoption after we’d put the issue to rest, and for my sweet friend Emily, the one who always believed.