left-over love

All week I've been following Compassion bloggers as they traveled to Uganda to meet sponsored children, connect with their organization across the globe, and bring awareness to fighting the need for helping so many little ones all across the world. Sponsors did everything from laugh to cry to smile to hug to shake hands to handing over all their emotions in one greeting... In one small moment, they let love steal the show, and just reacted to the hands and faces they have written letters to and supported financially for months and years on end. In all those small deposits made out of their bank accounts and all those hand written notes mailed miles away to each other...they finally met in a place where love had more then a name on a picture, but a face. A warm set of hands. A big wide grin peeking up through awkward first glances.

What was left...a lot of love. For the child, for the place, for the journey. If you think sponsoring a child is an empty cause... just ask a person who has made the rare trip to meet their chosen one.

Some times, there is a child we never meet. A child we learn to love from the very start of meeting, but never really get to hold. Does it mean that love doesn't exist? Or never happens? I don't think so. The journey to love a new child is always different for each beating heart. But love is recognized no matter what continent you find yourself on.

Between my children are a couple more I never met. At least not in person. While learning to love a new creation and making room in my heart for one more, I also learned to say goodbye. It's hard to look at the beautiful pictures of the smiling faces of all those innocent young ones miles away from me in Uganda. Hard because I know the truth. That deep inside those smiling faces is a little soul that started days before they arrived in the place they now grow up in. They were very uniquely knit together, in their mothers womb, with a great purpose. They started small and tiny and their value comes from being enough in His eyes. Fearfully and wonderfully made. Their mothers held them. Love them. Maybe we could too?

These children we never meet, still take some of our heart. Whether it is the child you held for only a brief moment as he left your safe little womb too early of an arrival... too late to not take a piece of your heart. Or a child you see across a screen and know you have some love left to share. To help another mother. When I realized I had already loved a little life that I would never really hold here, I felt my love for a child was still there. Empty arms, but a full heart. So I found Rebecca. Rebecca was born to another woman miles away from me and chances are we may never, ever meet. I may never know what she really looks like when she greets me or how she laughs or if she smiles much. But I know she is loved. When I had a lot of love left-over, I decided to give her some of it. To use it for good. Little did I know how much loving her a little, would teach me to love even more.

For many years now we have sponsored Rebecca. Her letters come and my growing boys know her face. Hear her written words. See that we are making room to send some love to someone just as uniquely woven together as them. It changes lives really... hers, ours. And all because I had some left-over love that needed a place to go. Sharing love, wearing love... it makes saying hello and saying goodbye that much sweeter.

Might you have some left-over love for another one today? 

Just click here to meet a few fearfully & wonderfully made faces waiting for some extra loving today!