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Saturday, November 26, 2011

Unexpected Cost

6:30 a.m., a light rain in the chill of the early morning, and a dozen bleary-eyed students balancing stuffed duffels into the back of a van, heading home.  Yesterday they did the traditional end-of-term countdown, and were released to clean up and pack.  By this morning the bustling boarding school was nearly empty, eerily quiet and damp.  I help Acacia load her suitcase, checked her passport, her money, her phone.  Then a big hug, and I'm standing back by my car holding in tears that rise and surprise me.  

When we agreed to bring our friends' daughter into our home, I thought about a lot of things.  Whether she would be too homesick.  How she would find the volume and pace of our family in comparison to hers.  Whether she would find friends, or regret not living in the dorm.  Whether we would thrive together.  How the sibling relationships would work out.  It is an awesome responsibility to parent someone else's child, and I expected some sense of relief if we made it through our first three months relatively intact.

Instead, I felt only grief.  Another precious person to hold and release.  Another important relationship that has huge gaps of space and time.  Another piece of my heart sent away.  Four kids were going to leave our home eventually, and now we have to survive five.  

Be careful whom you love, or just let the cost sink in and hurt?  









1 comment:

Bethany said...

Though my first comment is that you should just pack up the fam and head to Mundri, my second thought is that today is the first Sunday of Advent. And we together remember the God who let go of His only Son so that one day, we could all be together with no more goodbyes. May our reflections this year remind us of the of the God who understands separation from children, and has made sure the promise of eternal reunion. Love and miss you, and also feeling sadness here of more goodbyes.