A Meeting

We made a trip to our local aquatic center yesterday, eager for warmer weather, and thankful for the indoor, heated, energy expeller. After we arrived, I noticed a beautiful Caucasian woman enter the pool with her beautiful Chinese daughter. I never want to make assumptions about how families are created, or who is who. But I can't help myself, I gravitate towards those who may, just may, have experienced the beauty of adoption, as I have. I swam close by them, the two distinctly beautiful girls, enjoying each other; mother and daughter. They, oblivious to their racial differences... me, keen on them, and feeling magnetic towards them... longing to hear their story. And hoping they ask mine. We make small talk. And, as I usually do to hopefully peek further conversation, offer up right away that we were blessed to adopt our three beautiful boys. She smiles, knowingly. Her daughter asks for help, she, appropriately, leaves immediately to go to her. We look back at each other often, as we swim near our children, ducklings really. This new experience of gliding in the water. It strikes me, once again, as I touch the beautiful dark skin of my Hawaiian/Japanese boys, that our touch, the familiarity of it, the comfort, knows nothing of the biological difference. The ethnic diversity does not exist in touch.. only our shared closeness exists. I look back at the mother, she asks if I would mind sharing how these boys came to be mine. These precious little ones that were, at one time, so completely not a part of us, but of another. And I share. And she is in awe. And she shares her story, and I too, am in awe. She said she always thinks of that Scripture that talks about God making beauty from ashes. The deep moving of my spirit cannot be ignored. We thank each other, for sharing. Not just our stories, but the whole of it.