What Does Love Look Like

When I saw Prim's picture for the first time on Holt's waiting child page I thought, there's my little girl! She looked so serious and those eyes! Oh my her big brown eyes!

Did I love her right then and there? Yes. But it was more the idea of her that I fell in love with. She was our daughter in every sense of the word but I did not know her. I prayed for her with ceasing, I dreamt of her coming home. I longed to hold her and get to know every curve of her body. I knew God had chosen us to be her parents and she our daughter so I loved her in the way you do in faith.

Love is like a garden, flourishing with tender care and devotion. It is weeding, pruning, watering, nourishing. It is hours upon hours of dedication, coaxing and encouragement and love is not always reciprocated. Prim came home angry, afraid and confused. She did not love us but clung to us out of a primal need for survival. We had to earn her love slowly over time. We loved her by acting in love; doing for her what needed to be done so that she, like a withered garden, would bloom and grow.

We did not make our love for her dependant on the love she showed for us. Her heart was broken and her need for a safe place to fall superceeded our need to feel validated as adoptive parents.

I believe that love can heal any wound. But not just any love. Not the love you see in movies or feel after a first kiss. It's the love described so beautifully in 1 Corinthians 13: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.