When Your Heart is Plumbed like a Chinese Bathroom

I discovered in Hefei that if you take a bubble bath, when you drain the tub, the floor drain outside the tub starts to foam bubbles.  Lots of bubbles.  Bubbles actually were getting sucked down one drain to only be pushed out another.  From watching Nemo, I was convinced that all drains lead to the ocean.  Rather, in inland Hefei one drain leads to another drain. 

Now that I am home, I see really how much of adoption is like Chinese drains.  When your child's heart appears drained of emotion, there is an unexpected bubbling up of a sweet first kiss.   Recipient me, and I was ever so grateful.  When your child's culture is drained, there is a bubbling up of new words.  There is a messy quality of new speech and it seems quite fragile like bubbles on the floor.   That momentary iridescent word is pure happiness.  Like "Thank you" and "I love you".  Those words pop and you are stuck with the smells associated when drains are all connected.  It is a funny thing to have a heart plumbed like a Chinese bathroom, but I think the unpredictability of it is exactly where God wants us to be.  The sweet Lord gets to sustain us in the draining out and the bubbling up, in the pain and the joy, in the emotion taking and the elation giving. 

God is constant and He is so besmitten with us that He has promised multiple times that He will never leave or forsake us and that He works all things together for the good of those who love him.  What a beautiful truth in a crazy plumbed world.