It all started with Ryan... well, then he was Gvido... now he is Ryan! In September of 2007, I found myself sitting in a Latvian orphanage singing along to a praise song while a teenage boy beatboxed the melody. Two years later... that teen boy is my greatly adored and horribly spoiled son. After being hosted that Christmas 2007, Jon and I traveled to Latvia to begin his adoption in March 2008. Almost 18 months later, he is the son we always knew he could be and brings more joy to us than we could have ever imagined. I never knew God could enlarge and morph a heart so much! I am certain neither Jon nor myself knew what God had in mind when the two of us got together at Samford University in Birmingham Alabama way back in 1994.
In the past two years, God has given us the pure joy to host so many precious orphans of God who spoke languages we could only guess at... Matiss, who turns 16 in September and is still studying hard in Latvia... Igor, who we had for a brief time last summer... Liza, a delight to my soul who wrote her name on my heart instantly and has a family traveling for her next week... and this summer, another little Latvian boy named Vladislavs.
Orphan hosting is the hardest and greatest thing of my life. I find myself crying more as I just watch the visiting kids do the simplest things, like stroll into the ocean for the first time. The emotion that can captured by 1 single photo, I am still surprised to find myself balling sometimes as I flip through photos submitted by host families. My heart is filled with such love and wonder and awe at a God who can make such wonderful connections from so far away. I'm amazed at his love for me and his love for them and the fact that he brings the two together and so forms instant bonds that it takes my heart a while to get over it... perhaps I never will. I cannot, in words, express the joy and gladness, triumph and sadness that embodies hosting. But, I can tell you it's supernatural, it's God-sized, it's not like anything else I have ever experienced in life. It breaks me and tears me up, then fills me to overflowing. I think I recall David speaking the same way about God in Psalms... so maybe I'm on the right track.
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