Zahra

Bryan and I have always said that if we ever decide to adopt, we want to adopt a child that God plops into our life in desperate need of a family. Someone we might have developed a relationship with over time, whose story we were already familiar with. I think we have always said this with the relative security of not feeling “called” to adoption ourselves (Christianese for – “That’s somebody else’s good deed,”) and not really knowing any kids that fit the bill. But at the same time we have been deeply moved by the stories of some of our friends and peers who have chosen to adopt children whose lives intersected at some point with their own. So with all the piety of the completely clueless we have often casually remarked, “Yeah, maybe we’ll do that one day too.”  

When we are here in Nairobi we stay in a big house that is the occasional home to a random handful of people from various backgrounds, working in various places in various jobs. There have been times when some interesting mix of Kenyans, Ethiopians, Sudanese, South Africans, Brits and Americans have ended up passing through at the same time (each of us with our own charming brand of craziness I might add) and I have thought to myself that surely there are cameras hidden somewhere here filming the most bizarre reality show ever.

One of the younger members of this household is an eight year old girl I’ll call Zahra. She is a refugee from a neighboring country and living here with a family friend and his own two daughters who are close to her age. Unlike the other girls she is pretty quiet, a little shy but she eats up any scrap of conversation or attention that might drift her direction. She is obedient and quick to help. But I’ve seen her be quite the goofball too. Annabelle loves her. The story I’ve heard is that her parents un-amicably split after one of the two converted from one major world religion to another. Her mother took Zahra’s younger brother and remarried a man in Uganda. Her father immigrated to Canada and has started a new family of his own. Inexplicably, Zahra was left behind by them both and is now living on the compassion of a family friend with his own host of problems in life.

I had heard bits and pieces of this story over the weeks and months that we pass back and forth through this house. It never stirred much more than passing sadness in me until one morning quite recently as I was watching the girls play in the living room it hit me like someone dropped an anvil on my heart, “This is the kind of child we were talking about. It’s someone like Zahra.”

Over the weeks since that realization I haven’t been able to stop praying for Zahra, that someday she would have the kind of family she deserves, whether mine or someone else’s. I can’t stop thinking about her.

I don’t write this to hint that Bryan and I are near adoption. Holy cow, he would probably think I was crazy for writing this blog considering only a week ago I was bawling snot into his chest at midnight as I pondered whether or not I will be able to handle two baby girls come January. Furthermore, I don’t even know enough of her story to know whether adoption would ever even be an option. I long to think that her mother and father are out there somewhere desperately trying to get her back into their arms. They have lost such a treasure. I write this mostly because I started half a dozen other blogs today that remain unfinished. I have learned by now that nothing ever really gets written except what is most on my heart. And today, almost against my will, it’s Zahra.

I can easily imagine my motherhood encompassing two blond-headed blue-eyed little girls that look a lot like Bryan and me. But I can also imagine our family getting a little messier in the years ahead, in the best sort of way imaginable. And that’s not something I really could imagine very well before Zahra. At least not in the detailed way that I imagine now. Now I imagine comforting new kinds of bad dreams and birthday parties not just for babies; I imagine learning how to braid different hair and new dynamics of family vacations; I imagine endless hours of paperwork and legal hoops and how our families would react; I imagine a lot of laughter and enormous help with two littler ones; I imagine hard days but lots and lots of love. It terrifies me to be honest. And it excites me.    

I don’t know if any of these things will ever be more than just imaginings. That in and of itself has been a humbling, eye-opening experience. What I do know is that I am so thankful for Zahra teaching me something about God. He is relentless. You can never, ever get to a place where he will leave you alone. He is always, patiently, persistently, lovingly pushing us further and deeper into what he wants for this world. And if you open a door in your heart even a crack that he thinks should be flung open, you can rest assured you are going to have a hard time closing it even if you want to. What a terrifying and beautiful realization that is.

Mary

In May, Annabelle and I drove to Friona, Texas to visit my grandmother, Mary Lee Talley. I had been warned that she would be much weaker than last time I had seen her, that she might not remember me. When we walked into the home where she was staying, we found her sitting in the entryway with many of her neighbors. She was holding a stack of papers, shuffling through them slowly while the old men and women around her craned for a better look. When we walked up to hug her, I could see that the papers she was holding were pictures of my Annabelle that someone had printed off for her from emails. When she saw us she lit up and said, “And there she is, my African baby!”

As I feared it might be, that was the last afternoon I spent with my Granny. Three days ago she passed away. Though she went quickly, faster than my dad could fly back to the States to be at her bedside, her death at 87 was not a shock. I say that even though in many ways death always seems like a surprise doesn’t it? As though it is not patiently waiting for each of us. As cliché as this truth is, we have all found ourselves celebrating through our tears this week. The thought of her at complete rest, reunited with her own parents and grandparents, with the love of her life from age sixteen, it’s hard to be too sad. We grieve our own loss. Like many of my cousins, as a grandchild I grieve the promotion of my parents to the next generation at the front of the line. But we can’t help but be anything but happy for her.

I wasn’t especially close to my granny and I feel far away from the commemoration of her life now. But even so I feel like I have my own unique touch of sadness and happiness this week. Yesterday we went in for our 20 week ultrasound here in Nairobi. The doctor patiently worked the wand across my jellified belly as the grainy image of our wiggly baby twitched across the screen. He finally settled on a good angle and squinting into the monitor told us with a grin that we have a healthy, (energetic!), beautiful baby girl.

She will be Mary Katherine, named after the paternal grandmother she never had the chance to meet. It makes me smile to imagine them crossing paths on their way in and out of this world, my Granny and her newest African baby. I know Granny would give her a wet kiss right on the lips just like she always did to all of us regardless of how young or old or distantly related to her we were. And I can only hope that in the handing off of a name, some of the residual love from a life well-lived will still cling to it as it is passed on to my daughter.

You are already so loved, Mary Katherine. You carry the name of one God chose above all others for the most honorable task a woman has ever had. You carry the name of one who loved her husband and children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren all of her life with apple-cakes, hand-made quilts, the occasional spanking and lots and lots of wet-lipped kisses. We can’t wait to see how you will make this name your own, how you will serve God and love people. We can’t wait to meet you, sweet girl.