Mia, to date

Another family adopting from the same orphanage saw Pinyi last week and sent us a bunch of still photos and... unbelievably... video. Such a brave girl, stepping forward, fighting tears. The translators said that it was her "first time to see foreigners", and that she was scared.

So we put together a short vid of everything we've got of her, to date. The song we used has a strange and lovely story. It's by Arthur Alligood, off an album I got in 2009 when he was a part time teacher, part time Nashville songwriter. But I hadn't listened to it in more than a year. 

Back in April, before we were matched with Pinyi, we had a months-long string of obstacles and frustrations. On one particularly mind-bending day, both Krista and I went to sleep overwhelmed, restless, and flat-out sad. That night I dreamed every word of this song – Hold On – and woke up to go dig through my iTunes. A great song, a good word. And five days later, the first photos of Mia Pinyi showed up in our email inbox.

the WHY.

Until three years ago, I felt safest doing what would cause the least amount of suffering in life. I had my "faith", we had 2 healthy perfect girls, and were a happy family with a lot of love among ourselves. In my thinking, I assumed that we should keep it this way, avoiding unnecessary potential for future suffering.

Despite an adult life of many deep lows and high highs, there has never been a prolonged time when I concluded that God is not real. I always knew He was real, and knew somehow that Jesus and the Holy Spirit were integral parts of His make-up. I heard and believed, and walked about my life with this belief right by my side. This felt safe, and relatively pain-free.

But there was also an undercurrent of fear. I feared that if I stepped out of my comfort zones and risked understanding who God really is, I was going to find out that He was a lot smaller than I expected... and while I would be disappointed with a small God, I would also feel somewhat freer to live without faith. Ultimately, though, my even deeper fear was that I would find out that God is much bigger, and much farther-reaching than I thought. This would require even more of me, and cause my faith to be even bigger. That was scary.

It's hard to summarize the story of how Caleb and I have ended up at this moment, just a week away from going to meet daughter number three in China. But it has everything to do with finding out that God is way bigger than we thought.

When I was playing it safe, He intervened. And I quickly learned the smallness of my lowest-common-denominator belief in Him, and that my undemanding faith lacked power.

I had laid out a safe, risk-free, pain-free plan for life. But God's plan is bigger – a plan to alleviate suffering and injustice in the world. If Jesus left heaven to come to a world that suffers, bringing his peace and justice, then He can ask more of me than that I just generally believe that He is real. He can ask me to do what He did... put down my agenda, in order to take part in the bigger plan of God.

Partaking in a plan of God's size and scale isn't safe, easy or convenient. For us, it includes adding a new daughter to our family – through an adoption that only began to materialize after a 3-year-long, grueling, confusing, inconvenient, heart-wrenching process.

This is a huge task for someone like me. But God didn't just put this on our hearts and then send us on our way, to report back when the mission was completed. He sent a Helper from day one, and my "general faith" was turned into a deep allegiance to His every breath. God has used the Holy Spirit to move, interact, lead, make open paths, shut ways down, and persevere for us – through circumstances, dreams, and countless crazy details of this process that He specifically tailored to us.

I would not have started, continued, or completed this adoption without this surprise help from the Holy Spirit. But God does what it takes to put His people on the move. Even me, the queen of wanting to avoid inconvenience and suffering.

God has given our family a lot of love. Now we get to share it with a little girl across the world. And He has made it all happen for HER, addressing the specific injustices which caused her to be an orphan, and to bring justice for the birthmother and/or birthfather who had to leave Pinyi in that middle school corridor in China. Their 5 pound daughter is part of a HUGE story and plan for them and the world. And to change the Ludwicks forever.

This won't be complete when we hold Mia Pinyi for the first time, it will continue on and on – taking on new forms of suffering, new forms of rejoicing. We started this blog, to chronicle our first meeting with this little warrior, the 3rd member of the "wee queens." We're so honored to be able to see all three of their relationships with this very big God unfold.

Krista