Families come together in different ways and at different times. We have a number of friends who have new babies at home or new ones on the way. Other friends just met their daughter yesterday in China. I'm always amazed at the diversity of life and because of that, the diversity of family. Even more amazing is God's providential hand over it all.
Yesterday was Mother's Day -- a unique day in the life of a family because each person who has taken on the mantle of motherhood is unique. Our pastor preached on the story of Moses' birth in Exodus. He focused on the role of Moses' birth mother. Her bravery in defying the edict of the Pharaoh and hiding her baby son rather than giving him up to be slaughtered. But that story has a unique feature that wasn't mentioned. The role of Pharaoh's daughter, defying her father's command and adopting as her own a despised Hebrew boy. She intervened on behalf of a child who needed her help. Perhaps she is the reason that later in life Moses, seeing a Hebrew slave being beaten by an Egyptian, stepped in to intervene. The roles that mother's play in the lives of their children can't be overstated.
In our day, Terri and I each called our moms to wish them a Happy Mother's Day and visit for a short time. The kids and I wished Terri a Happy Mother's Day as well. Yet hers was a shared day in our family because yesterday was also Jacob's Adoption Day, marking four years since a judge in Ryazan, Russia declared us a family. You can read about that day here. So we honored Terri on the anniversary of the day she became a mom in the eyes of the world. We all spent the day together and last night looked through Jacob's adoption book, watched videos and looked at pictures of the first day we met in March 2003, and showed him two birth certificates -- the first with blanks where the name of the father and mother should have been and the second with our names in those places. But we know there are names for those blanks on the first birth certificate. And they are not forgotten. And so we took time to honor those women too, writing them a note, as we do every year, knowing that in all likelihood they'll never be read, but also knowing they carried our children into the world and should be honored.
No one is without some role in a family. And all those roles are significant.
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