Sweet Home Vladivostok

November 19th, 2012

 

Well, we made it back. It is funny how a place so foreign can start to feel like home. The old adage "home is where the heart is" rings true as a large part of our hearts are being left behind every time we have to say goodbye again to our baby here.

Come tomorrow we will never have to say goodbye to her and walk out that door again. Tomorrow she comes with us.

It's good to be back.

We arrived to see the familiar landscape transformed yet again. This time snow blankets everything and it is falling in big, thick, fast flakes. The Russians are bundled up in their dark coats and with their large ear-flap hats. I look at Neil and we realize right away that we didn't pack as well as we should have... Oops!

So as we sit in our Vlad Motor Inn room tonight we are eerily quiet, the mood matching the silent snow outside. Both of us are thinking about tomorrow. How is it going to go? How will she respond? We will enter her "home" the same way as all the other times yet this time is so different. This time we will change her clothes into something that is, for the first time, HERS. The old clothes will be shed and left behind, for they were never really hers to begin with. We will carry her down that familiar hallway, past all that she has ever known, yet this time it will be for the last time. Will she mourn? Will she fight? Will she understand at all? The door will open and the world will be hers. We will pass through those tall, metal gates and she will step into a car for the first time. I pray that her fear is replaced by a supernatural peace.

So many thoughts tonight, so many ways that we are silently imagining what tomorrow will bring. Amazing to me that we know so clearly what is coming tomorrow in this dear child's life yet she doesn't have a clue. All she knows is that she is going to sleep tonight in the location that has been designated to her in the room of many beds yet it will be for the last time. She will never sleep in that bed again. She will get up and eat the same porridge that she has eaten for the last 3 years yet only a couple of hours later those bowls and spoons will never be seen again. We know all of this. She knows nothing of it.

What a beautiful picture of our own lives. Though we know so little of what is actually to come for us tomorrow (or any other day) our Heavenly Father knows every detail and He will be there beside us every step of the way. We are His and He is ours. Nothing takes Him by surprise.

So as we fall asleep, thinking we know what is to come, I rest assured in the fact that, in reality, I know so little yet I am in the arms of the One who created tomorrow, the One who knew about it before the dawn of time and the One for whom nothing is a surprise.

"For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.". Jeremiah 29:11

 

Posted with Blogsy