Flashbacks

Every once in awhile, I will get a sudden flashback that can completely warm my heart. Today I remembered sitting out on the sidewalk in front of my church on a Wednesday evening many years ago. I had permission to call Juan David on Wednesday evenings around 7:30, so I would step out of my weekly Bible study to sit outside and talk to him for about 15 to 30 minutes. We'd just sent all of our dossier (adoption paperwork) to Colombia, so I confidently assumed we'd be completing the adoption very shortly after that (based on other people's stories who had recently adopted a KidSave child.

I still remember that fateful phone conversation, one that I wished so bad I would have bitten my tongue. Juan David knew all along about our intent to adopt him, so I told him I didn't think it would be much longer. Ugh. Can I plead absolute ignorance on my part? Pure naivety? Over-confidence?

That very month, Colombia denied our petition to adopt him. We never got to complete that adoption of the eleven-year-old boy I so dearly loved. I never got to fulfill that promise, "it shouldn't be much longer now." I carried incredible guilt over that phone call for quite a long time.

Tonight that conversation out on the sidewalk came flashing back into my memory when I dropped Juan David off at church for a high school youth activity and watched him walk across that very sidewalk before walking in the doors with a huge smile on his face, eager to spend the evening with his friends, oblivious to the memory suddenly coming back to me.

A miracle.