Psalm 18:19

This past weekend TJ and I went on a movie date - so much fun to get away together! - and we decided to see Real Steel. (J. Edgar wasn't at our theater for some reason, but I still really want to see that one.) It totally surprised me, I loved it. I laughed, I cried, I hated Hugh Jackman, I loved Hugh Jackman. In fact, the only thing that made me feel better during the first 1/3 of the movie was knowing that he seems to be a good dad in real life. Basically, the movie follows a deadbeat dad who sells his son to the kid's aunt, but has to watch him for 2 months while she goes on a vacation. He's into robot fighting, and the kid (who loves robot fights) forces his dad to take him along. Obviously it's a heart-wrenching, heart-warming tale of a father and son reconnecting. I really liked the ending, because it would be asking a lot to assume that there is an obvious answer to a complicated family dynamic like this. Well, actually it is simple, but not what I immediately dreaded the answer was going to be.

Anyway.

What really got to me was during a fight when the dad is telling his son that the best thing for him is to go live with his aunt and her husband, and he asks, "What do you want from me?" And the kid says, "I want you to fight for me!"

And my first thought was, I'm sure that's how all abandoned and abused kids feel. And I can't wait to have a child someday, even knowing that I can never explain why their biological parents didn't/couldn't fight for them, and that I can't fill that void. But I know what I'll say: God did, and he can. He fought for you, and I fought for you. And he will keep fighting for you, and so will I.

And then I thought, me too. I want someone to fight for me. There is a chapter in my bible that I wrote "God and Me" on a long time ago. I recently rediscovered it, and a verse I underlined in that chapter says, "he rescued me because he delighted in me". And I love that, because I know that I needed rescuing. Rescuing from sin, from myself, from the life that I thought was best for me. Thank God he knew when to step in and save me from myself. And I'm thankful he continues to do it when I start to make plans all my own. I don't know that we'll adopt. Right now it's a dream of mine, but it's in the future, and I don't know what God has planned between now and then. But if it's his will, we'll do the best we can to show someone that we will always fight for them, and that there is a God who loves them and fought with everything he had just for them.