Last week I was reminded of something important...something that I have to battle to remember on a daily basis as we work to bring our son home...it's supposed to be hard.  The things that make a difference in life are always difficult.  It isn't easy to give one's life serving others.  It isn't easy to put the needs of others above your own.  It isn't easy to give one's resources to people who are living in poverty.  It isn't easy to bring a child of another culture and race into your home...but it is worth the struggle.

This is a struggle that seems foreign to many people in society.  We live in a country where most people live out their daily lives in an effort to look out for "number one."  We toil day in and day out to make our lives easier...fuller...richer...and the solution for many is money.  Society has come to desire a life that is lived out as easily as possible, but we are robbing ourselves of the beauty of the struggle.  The struggle develops endurance and endurance the faith that we will be able to overcome anything.

I would like to be able to say that I have lived my life embracing the struggle...but that would be a lie.  More often than not, I run away from the struggle and I try to make my life easier...fuller...richer...on my own merits.  This is not a life that shows the heart of my Savior...this is not the life that I want to live.

Katie Davis has been a great model of this type of love.  She gave up the upper-middle class life in which she was living in the United States to move to Uganda, teach school, start a non-profit organization called Amazima Ministries, and raise 13 adoptive children.  She understands that a life which glorifies God is supposed to be hard.

"Sometimes I want to spend hours talking with my best friends about boys and fashion and school and life.  I want to go to the gym; I want my hair to look nice; I want to be allowed to wear jeans.  I want to be a normal young woman living in America, sometimes.  


But I want other things more.  All the time.  I want to be spiritually and emotionally filled every day.  I want to be loved and cuddled by a hundred children and never go a day without laughing.  I want to wake up to a rooster's crow and open my eyes and see lush green trees that seem to pulse with life against a piercing blue sky and the rusty red soil of Uganda.  I want to be challenged endlessly.  I want to be taught by those I teach, and I want to share God's love by those who otherwise might not know it.  I want to work so hard that I end every day filthy and too tired to move.  I want to make some kind of difference, no matter how small, and I want to follow the calling that God has placed on my heart.  I want to give my life away, to serve the Lord with each breath.  At the end of the day, no matter how hard, I want to be right here in Uganda." - Katie Davis

I want this adoption and my life to be easy...but I want other things more.  I want to give up everything that makes me complacent and comfortable.  I want to give away more than I take.  I want to communicate to everyone in my life that Christ's love is better than life.   I want to teach my students that they can make a difference, no matter how small, and that caring for other people and speaking out about injustice matters.  At the end of the day I want people to be able to look at my life and say that I loved others...continually... sacrificially...especially when it is hard.