All of Me--Video

          CCM artist Matt Hammit wrote this song for his tiny son, born with a heart defect, yet his song has touched me as well. I've been an adoptive sister for 11 years now (okay, really all my life since Anna is adopted, but the roller coaster ride for me started when we began our first Russian adoption in 2001), and this song was so right I started weeping in the car when I heard it.

My siblings have been through a lot. They've been abandoned by those who should have cared for them. Three of them were homeless and spent a winter under a bridge at the ripe old ages of 4, 5, and 6.  One of my sisters has a flat spot on the back of her head because she was left for long hours in a crib with a dirty diaper and an empty stomach. They've been rejected by foster family, torn from friends, taken from grandparents, and separated from each other as biological siblings. Worse yet, they lived in spiritual poverty, utterly unaware of Jesus or His hope-giving, life-giving Rescue.

Things get messy when you spend your first 3 or 7 or 15 years like that. The worlds slaps the word "disorder" on a child with a background like that and calls the situation hopeless. And it is hopeless...without the love of God.

But I've seen the healing power in His love, made real to ex-orphans through the love of believers around them. It doesn't mean everything will be perfect right away. There will be tears. There will be brokenness. There will be ache and hurt and sin for all involved. But the Good News believed, the Gospel lived out and loved in a home, albeit imperfectly, really does heal. And to see former physical orphans becoming ex-orphans spiritually and gaining a perfect Father is unbelievably beautiful.

That's why I, as an adoptive sister, want to live the sacrificial everything-I've-got love modeled by my Savior. "Christian" literally means "little Christ," and that is what I want to be to my siblings 24/7. I can hold back my heart, knowing that their brokenness may break me, or I can love them like Christ loved me when I was broken. I can't bring about their salvation, but I can show them Jesus' passionate unconditional love.

They're going to have all of me!