His Name is Victory

I’m playing Christmas songs through the speaker at our foster & adoptive parents day out (which doubled as a Christmas party for the kids), and one of the girls asks me, “can you play the song Resurrecting? I love that song. It was the last song we sang last week at church.” I smile at her, turn on the song, and turn the volume up. The chorus is coming up and she says, “Oh this is my favorite part.” It goes like this: 

This story would mean more to you if you knew this girl, but let me at least paint the picture. She’s 10 years old and has already been given up by her biological mom, adopted, then given up by her adoptive mom and put into foster care, and then put up for adoption again. She has the most sass and the biggest attitude, but she’s also known for giving the strongest hugs, and she really is a sweet, tender-hearted girl who just longs to be loved. Since coming into her new foster home, she’s come to church every Sunday with her foster family, she’s watched her foster parents living in rich community- the kind of community that encourages and prays and fights for each other- she’s had her own mentor and many other consistent adults pouring into her and loving on her, and she’s began to learn about a Savior who comes to heal and to restore and to bind up wounds. I am blown away by the beauty of it, that this 10 year old girl who has been through unimaginably hard things, is sitting in service and is hearing and singing and remembering the words, “By Your Spirit I will rise from the ashes of defeat….Your name is victory, the resurrected King is resurrecting me…” 

His name is victory. Victory over all of the painful parts of her story; victory over the rejection, victory over the loneliness, victory over the fear. It’s this crazy mess of heartbreak and grief and beauty all at the same time. We grieve because no child should ever have to be separated from their God-given mom and dad, and no child should ever experience rejection from the two people who are supposed to love them most. But at the same time, I’m in awe of being able to witness such tangible evidence that the darkness has not overcome the light. That this 10 year old girl full of sass and rebellion walks into our church, and because of the power of the Holy Spirit, she begins to find healing here. And she learns what love is here. And she learns that she is a beloved daughter of the King, of the Most High God. It is the greatest privilege of my life to even get to be a tiny part of it.