Grace has many memories of life in China. That makes so much sense. She’s a bright, imaginative, intelligent little girl (and that’s not just me bragging!). She spent almost a full seven years in her orphanage. The kids there were her world and definitely her family.
In a family there always seems to be those you are happy to see occasionally, those who seem easier to get into a tiff with and those who are ever enmeshed with you at a heart level. Those are the ones that help mold you and who you can never separate from because they are such a part of your experience that it is impossible to know where you ended and they began. This is the case with Grace’s heart sister.
By all accounts they shared a crib and then slept next to one another in their low framed, high barred toddler beds. Once they grew to about six years of age they were moved to a new floor and building with bunk beds that was used for the older kids.
When we met Grace she had numerous photos with her. Within moments of meeting her she wanted to show us the photos and would list off her friends and the workers and her volunteers and we began to get glimmers of the very large and people-filled world she lived in. She was so blessed to have a volunteer (several in fact) that obviously were taken with her (more on that another day) and there were many photos of one little girl in particular(YF) with Grace. We just assumed that they were good friends and that perhaps they were best friends. She would talk of many girls, but we kept waiting for YF to be adopted a few weeks after we returned home – surely that would be comfort to her. Funnily enough, the girls saw each other on Skype, chatted a bit (I enjoyed meeting her new family!), but she was still crying at night for her friend.
A couple of months later, we received word from Grace’s volunteer X that he was registered to be married. Grace was happy and suddenly married people and weddings were of new interest to her. A few days later, after much miscommunication and poor Mandarin on my part, we discover that it is YF’s volunteer, JY, is X’s new wife. And suddenly, it makes sense. X and JY were the connection between Grace and YF, not the other way around. Are you following? lol
Soooo, with that in mind, I start back tracking to other things I know. The orphanage staff had told us (even since coming home) that Grace’s best friend had been adopted before her and was living in the US. I had been able to make contact with another family that adopted from her CWI at the same time and was told that “Yes”, they had met the family, but the family had seemed uninterested in a further relationship. The girl in question was MH. When I would ask if it was MH that she was missing, she would repeatedly smile and say, “No”. sigh… back to the drawing board.
Meanwhile, over the past 4 months, Grace has spent literally hours pouring over her photos. She would always list off everyone in the photos. There were many stories about X, but never a whole lot about the other children, other than their names. That is until a few weeks back. Suddenly after many weeks home, in her hopeless, sad, exhausted cry, she began calling out for MP at night. There was a name! And I knew just who she meant.
MP is a little girl that I had picked out of Grace’s photos from the beginning. I had prayed for her, even thought, “Wow, I wish we could go back for her”, but kind of let it go. Suddenly a few weeks back, all of that changed. God laid her heavily on my heart one morning.