Why Do You Love Me?

Keziah talks…A LOT!

She asks hundreds of questions every day. She’s exploring the language and trying to discover the meaning of words. She’s just curious about life. Oh, and she has a passion to discover how to get married. Seriously! Marriage, babies, and future career options are almost daily conversations. Standard answers:

1) You can get married after you finish college.
2) You can have babies after you get married.
3) I will be happy no matter what you do when you grow up.
4) Mom doesn’t have to be a scientist just because you want to be one.
5) You can have babies and work.
6) You don’t need to know how to get married yet!

This morning Keziah woke up a little early. So she also got totally ready for school just a few minutes early. Not enough to play or watch TV, but just enough so that I could snuggle her on my lap and kiss her head while we watched for her bus.

“Mama, you love me lots?”

“Yes.”

“Why you love me?”

Why? I don’t know that any of my four bio kids have ever asked me why. By the time they were old enough to ask, they had already been loved up so they didn’t need to know. Keziah missed out on 6 ½ years of loving. So now, thousands of miles from the land of her birth, in a family she’s only had for 14 months, she wants to know why.

So what was my deep answer?

“I love you because you are my daughter.”

Simple but all I can say. Why did we travel halfway around the world to bring Keziah home? Because our daughter was in China. Why do we love her? Because she is our daughter. Why are we planning to do this again to bring Hadassah home? Because we have one more daughter who lives in China and who needs to come home.

Adoption is this incredible miracle. Just as amazing to me as the birth of my bio kids. In an instant, a family exists where there was none before. Okay, that instant requires months of pregnancy or months and possibly years of paperwork and waiting, but then the miraculous part happens.

As I look ahead to Easter’s approach this weekend, I am reminded of the incredible labor of love God performed in Jesus’ death on the cross so He could adopt us into His family. Why? Because He loved us…because we are His kids and He wanted to bring us home. It’s just that simple.