brokenness aside

Sunday was our first full day at home with Kamelia, and Mason was kind enough to let me attend our regular 11am worship service with Ezekiel and Eden while he stayed with Isaiah and Kami. While there I understood for once what hurting believers mean when they say that they attended worship services during a difficult season of their life not to sing the words, because they just couldn't, but to be encouraged by hearing others sing the words for them. I wasn't able to utter the words "whatever may pass and whatever lies before me, let me be singing when the evening comes," but I desperately wanted them to be true - and the wonderful thing about worship, at church or at home or anywhere, is that God knows our hearts. I was already tearing up from the song lineup, but then the band introduced a totally new song called "Brokenness Aside." I have no doubt that one of the reasons He led them to select this song was so that my weary heart would hear it and be encouraged by it at that moment. It was about how Jesus takes our brokenness aside and makes it beautiful, even when the only thing the broken person knows how to do is run away and lie. Thinking about how Kamelia's life up to this point has left her completely stripped of freedom and love, broken to the point of being terrorized by the freedom and love that are now surrounding her, was powerful. I left the service encouraged that God is setting that brokenness aside and already making it beautiful.

Will your grace run out
If I let you down
‘Cause all I know
Is how to run

‘Cause I am a sinner
If it's not one thing it's another
Caught up in words
Tangled in lies
You are the Savior
And you take brokenness aside
And make it beautiful
Beautiful

Will you call me child
When I tell you lies
Cause all I know
Is how to cry

I am a sinner
If it's not one thing it's another
Caught up in words
Tangled in lies
You are the Savior
And you take brokenness aside
And make it beautiful
Beautiful

Kamelia is not the only broken person in our family! We all are sinners and all need His grace to not run out. Fortunately, it never does. We are at the close of our third full day as a family here at home, and Mason and I have already made alot of mistakes and learned several important lessons. Thank the Lord for our agency's post-adoption department. Lifeline has literally become my lifeline at this point! I have a long way to go in properly approaching my parenting of this child. She won't be like our others. Just applying some of the concepts I discussed with Lynn (she's an angel from heaven, I'm pretty sure) changed the game tonight. I know there are no quick and easy fixes, but rather a daily, moment-by-moment choice to love Kami in the way that she needs to be loved. I hope to write more in detail about this another time, but we are going to bed pretty early these days since both Isaiah and Kami are up with the sun. Even Ezekiel and Eden are getting up before 8 these days! I miss the days when I rarely saw the world before 8am (we have been sleepers-in for a long time), and these are certainly much fuller and more exhausting days, but maybe one day when they are all a few years older I will sleep in again. One can dream!

I don't want to visually capture and share too much of Kami's brokenness, though I did share on Facebook that video of her calmly rocking. Instead, here are two special pictures from today that show a glimpse of a new beginning for her.