Big prayers

I learned more about prayer than any other topic while adopting Jack. Through God's encouragement and some dear friends, I began to ask God for some very big things while adopting Jack. He kept His promise to me and He answered every one of them. I still put God in a box sometime, I still forget how big He really is, but at my core I was changed through the eighteen months of praying over Jack's adoption.

Strangely, it's kind of a let down, for life to be "normal" again. I know that sounds terrible, but it's weird I feel less connected to God in a way because now my opportunity for seeing Him at work has lessened (although I'm sure it shouldn't have). Adopting Jack was one of my mountain top experiences and it's always hard to come back down off of the mountain.

Then God decided to answer another big prayer in my life this past month. He gave us Korean friends. I know it sounds small, but to me it's huge. I had been praying (and had friends praying) that God would bless us with real Korean friends with children. By real I mean friends that truly loved us and loved that we had adopted Jack into our family. That is hard because, (generally speaking) Korean people are not super excited about Korean children being adopted by white Americans, and who can blame them really. They tend to be a very homogeneous society.

So on our first night of home church, you can understand why I had to excuse myself to the kitchen to compose myself, when in walked a white man, married to a Korean woman with two children. The woman was born and raised in Korea so she knows and understands a country that I really want Jack to know as well. But this family went against cultural norms and got married and had children as a mixed race couple in Korea. God worked it out, they were both Korean and American just like Jack, they had two children an older girl and younger boy just like us, and they love the Lord. Not to mention the fact that they go to our church and walked into our home...pretty easy to befriend I think.

The other night we had a social evening for our home church and since it was earlier Jack was awake and he got to meet the family for the first time. The mom, loved him, in a way that I think everyone does when you're far from your home and you meet someone from home. She picked him up and asked if she could speak Korean to him and call him by his Korean name. I said of course, because alas that was part of my dream. I stood there watching her whisper in his ear a message that was just for him and began to cry. I cannot fully explain to you what it was I felt, in part it was surreal to watch a dream unfold before my eyes, I could not fully believe that it was happening again, God was answering my very specific prayer. In part it was the mix of emotions that go along with international adoption, in hearing Korean again I was transported back to where my life with Jack began and I was overcome.

This family is a blessing in my life, an answer to prayer. I'm not sure how long they will get to live here, but of this I am sure. God will continue to answer my prayers for a Korean family that can be a part of our life. Jack will be raised getting to experience not just what it is like to be an American, but also what it means to be Korean, and that means everything to me.

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." Ephesians 3:20-21