The Beauty of Ugly

Sadie Lou and my parents escorted the boys and me to the International Adoption Clinic today. What an amazing place! I am so thankful for the quality care, and thoroughness, and plethora of knowledge and resources...can't say enough great things! But, I am also really glad both of my parents could come along - so Dad could help me with two active toddlers, and Mom could take Sadie Lou out of the room while I re-told, in bitter detail, everything I know of each of the boys' stories. Ugh. I knew it was important for the doctor to a have complete picture of their backgrounds, and I was able to share everything very matter-of-factly. But now we are home, and I just fed them their lunches and whisked them to bed, and I'm losing it. I'm overwhelmed again at the ugliness of adoption - the life they endured, the life and family they lost, the country and culture they won't get to grow up in, the care they didn't receive, etc, etc. And to think their stories were "complex" enough that we almost didn't get them home. Long story, and not one for publication, but we know of other similar cases in which parents flew home empty-handed. Yet, God chose to place these boys in our family. Freakin' unreal. Adoption, when viewed as a complete picture, is beautiful. But it sure is ugly too.
It's so easy to gloss over the ugly part. Even in my own life. I can sing "amazing grace how sweet the sound to save a wretch like me, I once was lost but now I'm found, was blind but now I see." Wretch. Lost. Blind. Saved. Found. Seeing.
Today while putting the boys down, I sat on the floor next to Joseph's crib so he could hold my hand through the crib slats. I sat reading "Half The Church" by Carolyn Custis James (amazing book by the way). The author was talking about God's first command to "be fruitful and multiply" and "rule and subdue the earth" and what it means that God has commanded us to be image bearers, and to multiply image-bearers...anyway you gotta read the book, but she was showing how we can rule as someone after God's own heart just as He will "rescue the poor when they cry to him...the oppressed, who have no one to defend them, He feels pity for the weak and the needy, and He will rescue them. He will redeem them from oppression and violence, for their lives are precious to Him." Ps72:12-14.
I was thinking about the details of my sons' lives, and I was thinking about my own brokenness, and how it's easy to skip the ugly - but that can rob God of the glory He gets for our rescue story: God rescues, defends, feels pity, rescues, redeems...and considers us precious, brokenness and all.