First Christmas

We spent the week after Thanksgiving preparing our home for Christmas. White lights are hung outside and colored lights on the inside kitchen window. Our Willow Tree nativity is on our mantle and our tiny 6 foot Christmas tree from our very first basement apartment is adorned with colored lights and is sitting in the corner of our living room. One of my favorite parts of Christmas decorating is watching our children carefully place their ornaments on the tree. With each ornament they ask who gave it to them and when.  As you can imagine our tree is overflowing with ornaments and each year we wonder how long this little tree will be able to handle the weight.

This year we added a new ornament. A silver elephant that reads “Baby’s First Christmas – Ravi Glenn – 5-8-2019.” As I sit here in my living room, lit only by the lights on our Christmas tree, I can faintly see his ornament hanging. My heart breaks over the fact that we will not be spending his first Christmas together. We will be a world apart. But tonight the feeling I can’t shake even more than the distance between us is the grief and loss Ravi’s biological mother must be feeling. As I see his very first ornament hanging there I imagine all the other “firsts” we will get to witness once we bring Ravi home. But those milestones that we will see also mean the many “firsts” his biological mother will miss.

Adoption is full of so much joy but also equal amounts of loss and pain. What “firsts” is his mother grieving? What holidays will she long to have her son with her all the while knowing she did what she believed was best for him. I will likely know very little, if anything at all, about Ravi’s biological mother. And yet I will always be connected to her through her son. I will always be thankful that she chose life and cared for him enough to make the decision to surrender him to the safety and care of the orphanage.

Tonight as I take in the beauty of the Christmas season and reflect on the birth of our Savior, I pray for this woman that I will never meet but whose son will eventually call me Mama. The weight of this is not lost on me. I am praising God for His son and the promise I have through Christ. I pray that one day Ravi’s biological mother will hear this promise of Jesus, that He is “Emmanuel – God with us.” I pray that she will one day celebrate Jesus’ birth because she knows His birth led the way to her salvation and adoption into the family of Christ. And I pray that one day she and I can worship our Lord and Savior in Heaven together.

Would you join me in praying for Ravi’s mother?