For YOU

Written by Monica Barlow in Gimbie, Ethiopia

Life isn’t fair. I think I have heard that most of my life. I remember my mother’s wisdom on the matter. She would always remind me that no matter how much I wanted everything to be fair, it just would never be that way on this earth.

But Seena’s (not her real name) situation seemed grossly unfair to me - her mother’s life changed forever by an elementary school teacher (who fathered Seena). A teacher that would move six hours away from the problem and leave no hope for support. Shunned then by her family, Seena’s mother traveled two hours away from the shame to make a life for the two of them. In a third world country, the life of a single mom is almost impossible but she still chose life for Seena over convenience.

In a culture where abortions are everyday events, the choice to end the problem would have been simple, but for some reason, this woman carried Seena for nine months by herself. She was resourceful and found a family who she could work for in exchange for food and shelter. No extras could be afforded, but at least they would have a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs.

And what prompted the choice of “Seena” for a name? To be named “for you” seems so deliberate, yet who WAS she for? Surely, Seena was not for this teacher, since he was not interested in her mother at all. Maybe Seena was for her mother, but this too seemed hard to fathom since her abandonment two nights previously. So when you are a five month old baby, who ARE you here for? The obvious answer is that Seena is here for her Creator, her loving God who knit her in her mother’s womb and made her with a purpose even in her rough start in life.

But even more than God’s tender care in her life, Seena is for YOU, whoever you are. You know deep in your heart that God has called you to be her family, the people that will rescue her and love her the rest of her days. You have already started loving her and you have never met her, because God has placed a hole in your life, just Seena-sized. She waits for you here. The process will be difficult and maybe expensive too, but once Seena is part of your life, God’s Will will be evident. He NEVER makes mistakes.