MICAH- "Who is like our God?"

Words cannot begin to express what we have seen and felt today. Our hearts are swimming in sadness mixed with mercy. We can no longer ignore the face of starvation. It is the face of our son. I'll tell the story because in the telling perhaps we will find peace and you will find HOPE.

What we know about Micah's life before he came to our agency and to Addis isn't much. We know he was relinquished by a brave, amazing woman who wanted him to live. She gave hope to a hopeless child. She walked away from her own flesh so that he might have life. We knew he was sick; we knew he was little; we knew he was a miracle. But there is so much we don't know. The silence of what we don't know is deafening.

This week, through my great friend Sherry and an amazing woman who gave her life for a year to our kiddos in Ethiopia, a bit of that silence has been filled. God's timing with this was so perfect. I had just written my previous blog post and my heart was filled with wonder at the amazing redemption of adoption and yet broken by the pain and reality of what abandonment is. We were weary of the fundraising, the questions, the unknowns.

God BROKE THROUGH and gave us, yet again, an image of his amazing grace and love for the orphan. HE IS HOPE.

This week the silence of the unknown has been filled with screaming and has been replaced with an ache in my heart and stomach so real I can barely breathe. The screaming is of both horror and hope. It's unreal.

The brave, loving, amazing Rachel, who spent so much of her time caring for our kids in Ethiopia, sent us photos of Micah when he first arrived in her care. I have no words to express how these photos have broken my heart, shocked me into facing the reality of STARVATION and the hopelessness that has blanketed so much of Africa.

We knew he was sick. We knew he was small. We knew he was a miracle. We didn't know he was dying. DYING. STARVING TO DEATH.

We've all seen the pictures and felt sadness for a child a million miles away who has nothing to eat. What if it were your child? Have you actually ever asked yourself that question? IT WAS MY CHILD. The emaciated, sunken face; the protruding, distended belly; the skin that hangs off like an elephants; and the bones, the bones...

I've been trying to get the courage to show you the real pictures, to show you the face of starvation, the face of death apart from our Savior. I can't, I WON'T, do it. This is Micah's story and I will let him tell you one day. When he can look into his own sunken eyes and accept his distended belly, his hanging skin, his skeleton-like body, I will know he is ready.

I will tell you that there is NOTHING that prepared my heart for those photos.

I will show you the photos of my 3 month old baby 2 weeks after he came into the care of our amazing, mama-bear, fight to the death for every baby agency-family in Ethiopia.


Here's our little Moo. 3 months old.

This photo shows a MIRACULOUS change in our son. Given proper nutrition, care, and LOVE, he was transformed. God's grace reigned supreme in the life of our Micah. God's grace reigns supreme in my life and I am struck dumb by his mercy.

Micah is simply an earthly, physical glimpse of how our Savior saves us all from the starvation of our souls.

Thank you, Father, for saving my son.