If you love something let it go free. If it doesn’t come back, you never had it. If it comes back, love it forever.”
Mr. Fantastic and Boy 1 rolled out of bed in the still-dark morning and headed to the airport. After Rice Krispies and quiet conversation, they drove away.
I have never been to the orphanage our church supports in San Luis Potosi. But there go two of my greatest loves, out the door and on a mission.
My eyes fill with tears whenever we talk of orphans. I long to give, to serve, to care for children who have no parents.
My heart fills with a curious mix of joy and sadness when these two go to serve the fatherless.
I am double-minded, wishing they would stay with me, cozy and safe in America- or maybe I wish I could go with them.
I want to see the eyes that long for love staring right back at me, to watch the smiles flash brightly when we play soccer, to thank the women who lay their lives down to raise abandoned children, and most of all I want to pray with open eyes that have seen those whom God is so concerned about today.
There is no easy way to live a life loving others more than yourself.
It is mothering these other three little people that keeps me tied to home. And it is mothering this one who is going beyond me, to a place I have never been, that keeps me tied to God.
When you first have a baby, your life as you have always known it stops. Motherhood seems to hold back opportunity in those early years. Complicated little people require a great deal of focus and attention.
Unfair is the only word for what happens as they grow up. With little knowledge of all you sacrificed for them, your children believe you when you say they are meant to have their own lives.
That’s when they do something like go to Mexico without you, and you feel your heart may burst.
But this really is the point of it all, isn’t it? We mothers are meant to send our children into a world we will never know, to touch lives we could never touch.
It takes a brave heart to accept that the baby that was a gift from God to you is now meant to be a gift you give to the world.
That is why, dear Mexico, I send you my love in the body of a little blond boy who loves sports, fast cars, and rice and beans. Treat him well and squeeze every bit of love from him while you have him.
He is my gift to you. I am grateful to have a son like him to give, and even more grateful that there are a few more years left before I must give him away completely.
A mama’s heart is a complicated treasure of a thing.
