To begin with, let me tell you I have wanted to adopt from the time I was 10. I recently found an old journal from the 90’s where I confessed to wanting to adopt because #1 who wants to push a child out!? (eek!) and #2 our world is so full of children in need already! So I decided then and there: I would adopt someday. When my husband and I had been married a few years and were [ridiculously] surprised twice with biological children, I had a dream.
The dream came one night when my dearest friend Megan returned from the World Race with stories of kids from every corner of the map. (I should have realized!) We talked all night and I went to bed so filled with love for kids that I dreamed of a young African American man who was once an orphan. He was returning to the orphanage he had lived in and was challenged to “make something” of his life. He faced where he came from without knowing where he was going. A man who ran the orphanage seemed to be persuading him to the side of “evil & darkness” over and over again, yet in the end he always chose good. In the end, he even returned to run the orphanage so that he could change the fate of others and give them a second chance- to believe in kids the way his adoptive family believed in him. He was going to give back all the Father’s love he himself had received. During the whole dream I felt a protective mother’s heart for the young man. He had been through so much! And despite America’s claimed “racial equality” an African American man does often have to prove his good intentions, it is not assumed. Well, God pointed me toward that mother’s love and made it clear that this boy was to be my son someday.
God allowed me several more dreams of my boy including one just a year and a half ago where all I saw was his face. I saw him smiling at me. I saw his deep dimples and the caramel color of his eyes. I saw his light eyebrows and his shaved black hair. I saw his profile and memorized the shape of his head and ears. I saw how his skin was like midnight on the back of his neck and faded slightly until it was milk chocolate on the apple of his cheeks. It seemed like I got to stare into his lovely cherub face all night and when morning came I asked God why I had only seen him and not spoken or played or had a glimpse into his life like before? God seemed to say all I needed was to know my son- really know him. And his eyes had told me everything.
This is the face I have prayed for. After the first dream I started a prayer journal and wrote down my dreams of him and my prayers for him. I have prayed over his biological siblings, his mother and father, the “orphanage” (or in my unknowing mind, the US Foster family) where he lives. I have prayed for his past, present and future not knowing where I fit into the story. And I have prayed for my biological kids to have a heart for the orphan and my whole family to be prepared and bursting with love and acceptance whenever this little guy comes to us. And God gives me hope- patience to wait and hope to know he is coming…someday.
BREATHE 
3 thoughts on “A Dream”