Dear Charis Family,

The struggles for those who would like to become pregnant and have not been able to are universal to every culture on God's green earth and, we can safely deduce, have been encountered within every generation since at least the time of Abraham and Sarah.  This struggle is one of the hardest to watch my friends encounter, whether they are distant people who speak another heart language or affluent, Jesus following couples living in my home country.  ALL of them go through a heartache and a wrestling with the realities of God's involvement in our lives and the limitations of mortal bodies.

I include this little story in the Tidbits this month because it is an issue that is SO COMMON to life on the field overseas.  Whether a worker is a family woman or single, unmarried and childless (like myself), that worker will still encounter the powerful pain of infertility in someone's life.  Many times it is the local people who are struggling.  In Ebony, I DAILY meet women who want me to "give medicine" to help them become pregnant--either for the first time or just for more times.  Their worth is solely in their ability to have many children.  So, they strive and abuse their own bodies in order to make this happen.

One of my dearest friends there is without a child, but desperately wants one and would be a terrific mother.  She is now in her mid-thirties and realizes there isn't much time left to explore the possibility and expect a safe delivery in conditions like those in Ebony.  She has delivered multiple babies although she is not a midwife.  She lives with the second wife that her husband took because he wanted children.  She helps raise those three children he has with that wife.  They love her dearly.  She receives beatings and carries an unbalanced load of family responsibilities because she is seen as worthless to the family.

To complicate matters and obstruct God's justice further, in the culture of Ebony, adoption is not an option.  An abandoned baby must be either taken in by family members or left in an orphanage.  Once a child is in an orphanage, there is no other option for them.  Many are neglected, abused or used for child labor and the human trafficking market.

Local friends are not always the ones who struggle to have the babies they desire.  They are not the only ones who look at incompetent parents and wonder how God could be gracious enough to grant a child there while keeping their bodies barren.  Many, many, many Christian overseas workers also face this reality in their own lives and families.  The universality of the issue causes me to believe that struggling to have a baby is not a burden of suffering God places on certain people as a punishment.  Children are a gift and a reward, the Word says, but the issue doesn't bend both ways.  I believe it is much more complicated than that.  Part of the complexity is the fact that God has a whole, big, wide world in view.  He has His eye constantly on the fatherless.  He hears their cries.  He exhorts that true religion is to care for these.

I want to tell you about my friend, MamaBee!!!  She was a co-worker of mine in East Asia for several years and she and her husband remain dear friends, deeply invested in the work all over the world, especially with Cousin people groups.  MamaBee and her husband know they are created by God to pour into a family, raising children to know and love the Lord.  Yet, they have not been able to have children from their own bodies.  Recently, God has led them down a journey to receive into their family children from another nation, language, race, and even born into another religion....that those children might LIVE and know the Lord.  Literally, their lives have been in danger.  As MamaBee cares for them right this very second, one of them is severely ill with a parasite and no one knows how long his little body has been compensating for this infectious stranger!  Thank goodness these two new children of MamaBee's are with her now and able to be cared for by her.  Some others are not so lucky.  In fact, children are dyeing in orphanages around the world because of neglect, abuse and the sheer inability of the service providers to apply relevant care to each individual.
 

I wanted to highlight MamaBee's case for you today, selfishly, because I want you to pray for her family.  Because their adoption process is dragging out and he must return to work in order to provide for the family, her husband has had to leave her behind in a third world nation where she doesn't know the language and has never lived before.  Their journey in trying to offer themselves as adoptive parents has now taken years.  The children they currently have were probably being born sometime around the time that they started the whole process.  These days, in my observation, it is not that adoption takes so long only because of simple paper pushing.  Almost every couple I know has also experienced adoptions falling through.  Can you imagine the pain?

MamaBee is no stranger to the ups and downs that others have gone through, yet they have persevered under the Lord's gentle direction and with His provision.  The two children MamaBee has with her now, in her tiny little rented out flat, are HER children!!  They are finally free from the confines of the system and able to grow, heal and develop in her care.  Their time of adjustment and bonding is greatly disrupted, however, with continued struggles in getting the necessary paperwork finished in order to bring them to their new home.  MamaBee is adamant at this point that the children will NOT be abandoned once again.  She will NOT return them to the care facility they were in.  So, she is staying on in their country for as long as it takes.  MamaBee, her husband DaddyJ, and their babies H. and A. could really, really use your prayers.  If you would like to pray for them more intently and follow their story, please contact me directly.

When I watch my Christian friends struggle with infertility, my heart aches for them.  I pray their struggle is only temporary.  But, I also have great faith as I have watched, time and again, God use the suffering to make them ready to be like Him in their ability to receive and raise a child not born of their own blood.  I have watched little babies, and adult men and women, thrive in the Lord's love because they were adopted.  I really believe that, in our generation, God is using adoption as much as anything else to accomplish His purposes and get His glory among every people, tribe and nation.

I'm sure MamaBee would say at this point, "It's not about me.  It's never been about me."  She has her eyes focused on her two babies, who dwell at the uttermost parts of the earth, created by God, made in and for THIS generation, designed to know Him and make Him known.

Please take time to pray for MamaBee today.  Please also pray for my friend in Ebony who struggles so much in her life without a child.  Adoption is so close to the heart of Charis Childbirth and (would you agree ladies?), I really don't think we would have this ministry without the amazing blessings of adoption that exist in our faith and in our culture.  Just think of what God will do with these children being adopted in this young generation!!!  Just think of what He has done with us, adopting us into His family!!

I think I'm going to go read the book of Galations now! :-)
Love you all,
E.C.