Rest in Peace, Dear Friend

Sunday morning we got a phone call telling us that a dear friend had passed away. She was only 31 but had struggled with numerous complications from diabetes her entire life. She left behind a five year old daughter. We grieve with and for her family. In doing so, I have been reflecting again about my own daughters and the circumstances that brought them to adoption. Adoption is necessarily a bittersweet reality. It is the joyful creation of a family but it is joy that is often birthed in sorrow as a mother must make the choice to give up her child. No child should have to grow up without a mother. And yet, my dear friend is gone and her little girl is now motherless. She is not alone. At least she has an adoring father and grandparents and friends and an entire support structure to make sure that she will have what she needs to navigate a life filled only with the fragrance of her mother's memory. In that regard, in a seemingly tragic situation, she is blessed.

In Africa, millions of children are motherless and have none of the benefits that my friend's little girl has. They are dependent on the kindness, the compassion, and the engagement of total strangers who are often on the other side of the world. They are looking for those who will embrace them and stand in the gap for the mothers who will not get the chance to raise them. Who will raise these children if we don't? So, as I now think about how I can do my part to stand in my friend's place and honor her memory by mothering her precious child as the need presents itself, I am reminded that I am doing that every day with the two little girls who share my life and whose birth mothers looked to strangers like me to do what they would never be able to do.

Rest in peace, sweet friend.

Do Something Now from Children's HopeChest on Vimeo.