faces.

It's happened again. Our campus has been transformed by the lives of the most precious kiddos around. The orphan choir is back and we now boast having the sweetest faces of Ethiopia and Honduras running here and there. My heart has officially been removed from my chest (not that I ever got it back from our Haitian kids but...) and is now in the hands of these adorable little ones. Have I mentioned that I have the best job in the whole world?! Cause I so do. Who can say that, right smack dab in the middle of a work day, they got to stop and play duck duck goose with three beautiful little girls from Ethiopia (who didn't quite understand our "american" way of running around the circle, but darted in and out of it trying to catch us and each other...I liked their version better anyway) and didn't feel guilty about it at all...actually quite the opposite? Oh, that's right! I can!! And my heart just melted as I ran about with them. 


Gazing into their beautiful faces is just like staring straight into the eyes of my God. It's powerful, let me tell you. Being around them, loving on them, and trying to understand their very broken english, makes my heart deeply ache for the children out there that I pray will be in my life one day. The children He will call me to rescue. To me, in this moment, that's exactly what these kids are...and I can't get enough of them. I look at them, and I just love them so very much. It's a strange thing, to have little people walk into my life that I didn't know anything about just a few months ago and, wham, instant love! There will never be any words I'll ever be able to write or say to describe it. 


I think the same thing every time I gaze into the face of little Harper Grace. Her sweet little Korean face is a daily reminder of all that I left behind in that land that stole a part of my heart. The people, the sounds,the smells, the cold winters, and springs that boasted air drenched in the sweetest cherry blossoms...all of it somehow squirmed its way into my soul and not a single day goes by that I don't think about it. Or them. All those faces, some that I can't even remember, some running together, but all those dear, beautiful faces that looked up at me every day from their desks...yes, my heart aches for them. I wonder where they are and what they're doing...did anything He said through me carry into their teenage years? This is what I think about in the night, this is what I wonder...did it make a difference? I long to know that it did, that He received the reward of the time I spent there. I could have done so much more. But, I was so young, almost too young to fully comprehend what had been placed in my hands and oh, how differently I would do things now. Yet, that time was more for Him to work in me then for me to do anything grand. For I absolutely know that I would not be the same person I am today if I had not gone. All the heartaches that happened, all the joys, tears, and laughter, all of it made me who I am. And I trust that not a single word from Him went out without accomplishing what He wanted it to. For He never wastes anything.


So, today and tomorrow and the next day and the day after that I'll look into the little faces surrounding me in my mid twenties, I'll dream of the ones that will come in the future, and I'll think of all the ones that filled the days before my twenties had even begun. And I'll smile and know that He used every moment to the glory of His name...and I'll dream of Heaven, when I'll know all that I'll never know on this earth about so many little faces that have passed out of my life...