As our states have issued stay-at-home orders and our worlds have all become smaller in the face of Covid-19, I’ve found myself in stillness and silence more than at any other point in my entire life (at least when small male humans are sleeping).

Travel to China is closed. Families in process of adopting lovies from the nation we love are at a stand-still. Information about the superheroes we normally advocate for is brief and long-coming from orphanages just trying to manage children amid a world pandemic that hit their country so hard.

The military families we love serving are in an unprecedented season of immobility and non-deployments. Moves have been cancelled. Service members are actually home. Many bases and posts have moved to mission essential staffing only, and the soldiers who normally spend holidays on separate continents, more than ever, are spending days and nights with superheroes who actually get tucked in by them at night.

The “Capes” and “Combat Boots” part of the causes we fight for on this blog are both in strange and quiet seasons.

And in the midst of it all, I, like so many people whose calendars have been cleared, have found myself somewhat lost.

“Lord,” I have prayed on so many of the last 17 days we’ve spent almost entirely inside our home, “we have more time, energy and space than we ever have in our entire lives. Where are we supposed to invest in this crazy locked-in season? For the love of toilet paper, what are we supposed to BE ABOUT?”

Because this girl likes themes.

This girl likes labels.

This Type A rule follower likes neat little lanes I can move up and follow and say, “This is where I stand!”

But the truth is, God doesn’t work in categories.

He doesn’t fit my life into labels and lanes.

And the simple answer I’ve returned to as I’ve gotten more precious time with Him than I have in my whole life is the same thing we as Christians have ALWAYS gotten to “be about.”

The beautiful and messy business of loving God and loving people.

It’s been three weeks since I cried my way through the Atlanta International Airport, clinging to the hand of a boy who stole my heart and rocked my world.

Three weeks since that boy placed his hands on my cheeks and beamed as “Ayi ku la.”

Three weeks since we said “zai jian” to the 10-year-old superhero we can’t stop thinking about, reminiscing about, talking about or praying for.

I never knew three weeks could feel like such a lifetime ago and almost yesterday at the exact same time.

That boy, he wrecked me. Utterly, completely, wholly, fully wrecked me.

In the surprise of my life, God used a 10-year-old orphan from China to rewrite my definition of “love.” To turn my world upside down. To reveal my flaws. To shine a light on the dark spots of my heart. And to teach me about a NEW kind of love. A bold kind of love. A kind of love that gives itself wholly and unashamedly and FULLY without reservations, even when the person offering it knows that a 200 percent kind of love WILL end in a 100 percent chance of pain when the person being loved and the person doing the loving have to say goodbye at some point in the future.

Especially when the person imagining herself to DO the loving finds that SHE IS INSTEAD the one 200 percent fully LOVED.

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