This is Your Baby Girl...

I have had my share of challenges with my health over the past six months. I have had so many wonderful friends come alongside me through this difficult time that I am so humbled & grateful for their support. This past week I had one of my dear friends call me up to offer to take me to lunch. I know that seems like a small thing but the timing was ideal. I had fasted the night before for lab work (they took  11 tubes of blood) that morning, my preschooler was throwing a fit, the brakes on the van were squeaking not to mention the fact that I was hungry, irritable & in pain. I was practically in tears when she called & oh so thankful she did. We returned from lunch around 2pm. High schoolers were coming home from school & we saw this glowing, very pregnant girl walking up the street, backpack on, ankles swollen. We stopped & introduced ourselves. The girl was carrying a large volume of English Poetry in her hand & she spoke of her plans to graduate high school (in 2014). She told us she was having a girl & what all she was looking forward to in her future with her daughter. I offered to babysit so she could study as we exchanged contact information. She had such a sweet spirit. We prayed together briefly & she departed after a quick hug. As I watched her walk across the street, her dress swung freely in the light breeze, the Lord whispered to me, “This is your baby girl….oh & that is your mission field.”

No, I will NOT be adopting her daughter; her daughter will not live in my home for us to love & cherish. I will however, come alongside her & encourage her as she enters motherhood. I have been good at encouraging young mothers in the past & with the Lord’s help I will continue to exhort young women in motherhood.  I won’t say I didn’t cry a few tears when God told me this. It was a baby girl & I would be pouring into both her life & her mothers’ but she would not be mine in the terms that I had thought.

I have been in contact with the birth mother of the foster girl that was in our home a few months ago. She has a long way to go with the horrors that have happened to her & the demons she still wrestles with. She has been cleaning my bathrooms to earn a little gas money to go visit her daughter which has benefited us both-we get to talk each week, she gets some cash & my bathrooms are sparkling clean! (so clean that Taylor thought he didn’t need to wash his hands after using the bathroom because, ‘the bathroom is so clean that there are no more germs on the toilet!’ Thus he didn't need to wash, gotta love 4 yr old logic!) J

I also will NOT be going to Honduras on a medical mission trip this fall but the neighborhood across the street has a teenage mom, a mother battling severe mental illness, a group of kids that hangs out at my house often & many others that He has called me to be a part of if only I will obey the call to the mission field across the street.

My God really does have a sense of humor… “this is your baby girl…oh & that is your mission field.”