As you read through the Psalms, a word appears that is not familiar to us...Selah. It means to stop and ponder. The writers of the Psalms wanted us to really stop and consider what was being shared.
Selah Grace, Ponder Grace. That is the name that God has placed on our hearts for our daughter. It is the identity that she will need to carry with her as she discovers who she is, and who God has called her to be.
The word grace goes as deep and as wide as the love of our God. I'm not sure that we can fully define it, describe it, grasp it. We have much to ponder. But specifically for our daughter, we want her name to always be a reminder of what is true and good in this world...His grace. And we hope for her to never cease in reflecting upon it. There are so many reasons she will be given to doubt...so much loss, uncertainty, and pain. For her, there will be a lifetime of moving forward into a future that she most likely would not have picked for herself. A life spent apart from her birth parents and being raised by another family. And yet by His grace, her heart can be fully restored and healed through the love of Christ. And by His grace, and only by His grace, can we offer her a safe place to walk through questions and grief, and to receive the love we have for her as our daughter. We will not be able to fix it for her. But grace will help some of it to make sense to all of us as we walk through the journey together. It will only be by stopping to consider God's grace in her life that she will find healing, hope, peace, and love. The loss of her birth parents, the home she was born into, and so many things that are tied to who she is will leave her struggling to understand her place in the world. By resting in God's grace, she can find peace in knowing that before she even entered into this world, that she had a Heavenly Father who loved her, cared for her, and brought her to a family whom He has made her own. Remembering that grace will help her piece together the story that God is writing for her life, and find hope in the life that God continues to create for her.
Her name is a reminder for us too. God has invited us to stop and remember His grace that has brought this beautiful little girl into our lives. She didn't enter into this world as ours, yet God saw fit to make her ours as much as our boys. He invited us into her story, and His grace is writing our stories into one. It is moments like tonight when our daughter is on our hearts in such a way, that we are overcome by the adoptive love of our heavenly Father. He took us in, He grafted us into the family of God for eternity. But even before He took us in, He called us by name and called us His own. He set His love upon us before the foundations of the earth. And this is the work He is doing in our hearts for our daughter...Selah Grace. We call her by name, we call her our own, our love has been set upon her many years before she was even born. We will take her in, and she will be grafted into our family forever. We are humbled that God has seen fit to bless our family with such a gift as this little girl. May we always be reminded to ponder the grace that has brought her to us. We have shared with many loved ones through this process that we have a daughter just as much as we have two sons...we just haven't met her yet. She is our child, in the deepest sense. We know this to be true. Oh the sweet, sweet day when we get to see her for the first time. Our hearts swell just thinking about it.
Selah Grace, our daughter that we can't wait to meet. Our lives have already been touched by you, little one. Our prayer for you is that you may come to know His grace through the loss and through the gain. That you would one day know that His grace has been upon you always, even in times when you felt alone and without hope. May you always know that you are held by the Almighty. That His grace sustains you. Selah Grace, sweet child, Selah Grace.
