MISSION UPDATE: I must decrease

The children had started returning from two week visits with family. Not all the kids left, but more than half did which made the return somewhat chaotic. Over the years, the children have gotten more used to the transition between their two worlds.

Because it's not at all a stretch to say they're desperately different worlds.

A couple of the girls, not sisters but both 9, were really struggling. They looked sad, kept getting teary, and just couldn't get their feet under them during that first 24 hours back. It's not new territory but when I found them sitting out back on the trampoline, they were talking sadly together and it tugged at me. I called them out of the 100 plus degree heat and into my room for a chat in front of a fan.

They crawled up onto my bed, looking nervous. Them looking shy and timid made me feel worse ... we've had one of them since she was 3 and the other since she was 5. How had we not made more progress than this? I could feel self rising. My own feelings were threatening to hijack the situation.

I noticed it and silently prayed for the strength to not make it about me. God is faithful.

As we talked, the older of the two said she really just wanted to live at her home. She misses her family and she wants to be with them. This particular child lost her mother to suicide and she's one of 9, 3 of whom live with us while the rest are either grown or are with the father. It's a story I won't tell in full for their sakes, but it's quite complicated for the children to process.

Her heart was feeling the weight of those unprocessed feelings and lingering questions.

She told me she missed her family so much when she was here and she just didn't think she could be happy. I know from past experience that she does eventually adjust back after these visits and she is indeed a very happy child. So I tried to encourage her. But my encouragement took an unexpected twist that shot an arrow through me.

I told her I was sure she missed everyone here when she's there but that she's still happy there. To which she solemnly shook her head. She carefully told me she not only doesn't miss us, she doesn't even think of us when she's there.

There was that bratty old self of mine again, bumping its way into the room and trying to take over. This sweet girl hadn't meant to, but her words cut and in an instant my brain started feeding me questions like, "If they care so little about you, why are you giving up your life with the rest of your family and friends in America? Why live so far from your boys and only get to be a part of their lives through a device if you're having no impact here?"

Seriously, this happened in a fraction of an instant. I was reeling in my feelings.

Thankfully, God was powerful enough to keep me silent and nudge me to ask for His help. I looked out the window to the smoke-filled field beyond my small backyard, and I prayed. Maybe I was just tired. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was years of thinking we were working with God to reach these hearts only to be told it wasn't working. Whatever it was, it hurt and I knew I needed to surrender those feelings.

I hesitate to share what happened because I think it's dangerous to look for a physical manifestion of God's power. Most often it comes in a "still, small voice" without fireworks or anything tangible to mark it. But the moment I prayed, I felt a tingling sensation and I knew God was offering me the evidence I needed that He was indeed supplying the requested help.

I looked at my beautiful girls, one with eyes cast down at the bed and the other sniffling with her back to me. I felt all the love I have for them surge through me.

"You know, Jesus loves us even when we don't love Him back. Even if you went to your home for two weeks and didn't remember Him at all, He never forgot you. And He still loves you."

Her eyes shot up and met mine and she shook her head no. "No, mama, I not forgot God."

Most of our conversation had been in Thai but she said that in plain, clear English. I was a little confused.

"What do you mean? I thought you said you didn't even think of us."

She looked so terribly ashamed as she cast her eyes down again, "But I not forgot God. I read my Bible, too."

Seconds passed as I processed what I was learning. She'd gone to her unbelieving home and forgotten us, the humans from her believing home. But she'd read her Bible and prayed while there. She hadn't forgotten God, at all. Slowly, God graciously let me see more clearly what I should have never needed to be reminded: we're here to connect the kids to God, not to us.

Her words were all the evidence needed to know that our time here hasn't been wasted, no matter how it feels sometimes.

She went on to tell me that one day her dad asked her to get a book and come show him if she could read. She got her Bible and bravely took it to her skeptical father and read to him from it. I asked if he was upset by her choice of book and she shook her head no.

"He so happy I can read!"

He got to have his pretty little girl read to him about her Jesus. The whole situation had come full circle.

A few more days have passed and the girls are both more settled now. Still not quite "normal" but closer. And I've had time to think, and reflect and pray. Which means God has had time to speak to my selfish heart.

We've been tasked with cooperating to raise children rooted in truth who will go to their families as missionaries. We shouldn't want to take a shred of the love they have for their natural-born family. We shouldn't feel threatened or hurt by it. We should be thankful that God is preserving that love within them so they'll care to take Jesus to them.

These kids are doing that. Recently, 14 of our children were baptized. Not flippantly or without understanding. They're truly having an experience even though, as the family raising them, we see all their shortcomings and something overlook the beauty of their transformations.

We're selfish. We're hot and tired and we miss loved ones. We're often lonely for a community of believers like we used to have. We see our failures far more clearly than our worst critics might.

But God is good. He truly is. He's good to allow us to be here. He's good to intertwine our story with theirs. He's good to give us such purpose. He's good to give us fresh courage when our supply has faded.

And He's good to gently and lovingly remind us of the words of John the Baptist when he said, "He must increase, but I must decrease." John 3:30

I have no idea what the future holds. I have no idea how long we'll get to be a physical presence in the lives of these children with visa laws tightening and world tensions rising. But I do know I can love them with everything in me, even if I leave and they forget me.

As long as they don't forget God!