Stop that rockin' that's MY job.

So I haven't told you much about child #4. If I started I might not stop and what I could share would fill volumes. I have always made the joke that God made her so beautiful so we wouldn't kill her :) To say she is head strong is like saying the sun is warm. The magnetic field around the sun is 15 million degrees.The closer you get to the sun the more you realize... you're dead. You're vaporized. That's kinda how powerful # 4 is. People don't really understand... except people with similar kids. Where I live there is a great amount, comparatively, of adopted little Chinese girls and the majority tell me their daughter is the same. We were told that in order to survive in an orphanage, these babies have to cry the loudest to get held, touched, fed... etc. I don't know if I ever saw anything sadder than when we first got # 4. She would lay on her tummy, and lay her head on her folded hands, and rock herself to sleep. That memory will never not make me cry. Babies shouldn't have to learn to care for themselves. All that to say... this kid has a will of iron!

So because of some hearing and speech problems, all the lessons I taught my other 3 kids at an earlier age, came much later to 4... again, you'd have to be in the same situation to understand. Lily flat out disobeys a lot... then she gets a nervous smile, that took us a long time to realize it was a nervous smile and not her mocking us. One night, she was laying in bed crying. She was absolutely heart broken over her sin... kind of a new thing for 4. She knew she was constantly doing wrong, but said she couldn't stop herself and she didn't understand why. Well, obviously this was an awesome opening to talk about Jesus.

In her language, I told her that we all sinned, she was no different. I told her that that's why Jesus took her punishment and that it was the only way we could be with God forever. She asked Jesus into her heart and asked Him to forgive her of her sins. I have to retell this message a lot... it's not like she just "gets" it all the time. But it was a shining moment.

We are all #4 to a "T". We all want to sin. We are orphans... belonging to our own selfish desires. We need a Father to comfort us, provide for us, hold us, protect us, guide us, love us... our need for Him is endless. But when we're babies, we don't realize how wrong it is that we have been rocking ourselves to sleep. And when we are old enough to finally get a glimpse of a better way, we still don't really sustain the knowledge as we ought... because we are always going to want to sin. When I look at 4, I see someone created to be adored, taught and redeemed. May we all see that when we look in the mirror, every morning: orphans redeemed.