When I was 21 years old, my prayers for my future children began to take shape. It was as if I knew they were already alive, not necessarily waiting for me yet, but growing up in their own places and living their lives apart from mine for a season. That year, I began to pray for the children who would join my family in the future, realizing that they could be currently living through the circumstances that would create a need for adoption in the future. That’s a scary thought, knowing that your future child could be living through trauma and not being able to prevent or alleviate the circumstances.

The surprise of my life this whirlwind fall has been meeting the child who was born that year – the year I began praying for her without ever dreaming she was growing up in Africa. A few years later, her sister was born. My prayers had always been for them, so I should not have been surprised when even our first hours together showed evidence of God’s work in their hearts and mine long before we knew about each other.

But as this adoption took shape, so did my fears. I was afraid that they wouldn’t trust me, afraid that we wouldn’t be able to communicate, afraid that our attachment would take years. Normally, fear cripples me, but during that season I drove a friend’s car and listened to her CD about how God is a builder. It seemed weird to think He could build intangible things like positive emotions, trust, and attachments, but surely those things are easier to build than an atom or an ecosystem? So my fears began to shape my prayers as I asked Him to build a structure for safety and attachment in my girls before we even met. I asked Him to redirect their neural pathways, allowing them to bypass the things that had once caused fear and insecurity and immediately build trust with me. Obviously, we’re only a few months into this adventure, but almost daily I see evidence that my prayers were answered in amazing ways.

The child who was supposedly terrified of light-colored skin walked across a busy parking lot to put her hand in mine, long before she knew I was her mama. She found safety in me, a stranger who did not speak her language. The one who hung back, timid, and described herself as the one who “always kept quiet” when others took her things and made fun of her suddenly can describe her feelings with beautiful language that brings tears to my eyes.

As this beauty has unfolded, I’ve had to wonder if Jesus has been praying for me, His daughter – praying that my attachment to Him would be secure, that I would not respond to Him out of old wounds and habits, that God would build in me everything necessary to enjoy life as His daughter. I don’t know what God did to prepare my daughters’ hearts for me, but I wonder if this adoption  (this uncertainty, this absence of home for Christmas, distance from friends and family, fear of inadequacy) have all been deliberate and gracious actions of a God who is building something new in me just as He is doing in my daughters.

What impossible are you asking Him to build this year?

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Mandie Joy is a foster parent and in-process adoptive mama of two beautiful little girls in Africa. She blogs at www.seeingjoy.com.