I'll Love You Forever...

...I'll like you for always
As long as I'm living,
My baby you'll be.
These are the words that echo through a favorite book in the Wilson house.

Forever.

That's a really long time. It's irrevocable.

I find it curious that on two different occasions this week, by two different children (one in first grade, another in fifth) I was asked if I would ever give my daughter back.

The first time I was asked, I must have looked dumbfounded. I asked her to explain. Her thought process was that if my daughter was adopted, and she came from China, could she ever be naughty enough that I would send her back.

I simply couldn't fathom where these thoughts would come from. But this is a highly impoverished community, and adoption is not something they understand. The closest they come is their experience with foster care and being shuffled between homes.

I so desperately wanted to share with them the grace of God...how He is my Father forever. Nothing I ever say or do can make Him stop loving me or make Him stop being my Father. The same goes for my love for my daughter.

Now, I don't want to make light of the heart-breaking decisions many families do face...when adoptions are disrupted. I do know that there are times when it's just not working...and having prayed with and for friends who have faced this, I have an amazing amount of compassion and know they did not come to the decision quickly or in a flash of anger.

But looking in the eyes of the two girls who posed these questions to me...I have to wonder what kind of stability they face to consider that a mother would ever stop loving her child.