Daring to Hope (Part 2) - Katie Davis Majors

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Daring to Hope (Part 1) - Katie Davis Majors
Daring to Hope (Part 2) - Katie Davis Majors
Daring to Hope (Part 3) - Katie Davis Majors

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

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God Shows Up

Guest: Katie Davis Majors

From the series: Daring to Hope (Day 2 of 3)

Bob: Katie Davis Majors says there are certain things that adoptive parents understand that bio parents just can’t fully appreciate.

Katie: What better way to clearly understand God’s heart for us than to bring a child, who is not biologically related to you, into your home and call them your own and believe that they’re your own? I now have adopted children and a biological child. I can say, with certainty, that my love for them is the same.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Tuesday, December 19th. Our host is Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. There’s a lot we can learn, as followers of Jesus, when we go near the orphan or those in need. We’ll hear more about that today from Katie Davis Majors. Stay with us.

1:00

And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. I was coming back from a trip recently—I was grousing about the poor condition of the airplane I was on. It was an older plane—seats were kind of hard and, you know, I was cramped up. I went on Twitter® and I just—[Laughter]

Dennis: Oh, you belly-ached on—

Katie: —to the whole world!

Barbara: Oh! My goodness!

Bob: —belly-ached to the particular airline in question.

Dennis: Oh, really?

Bob: I called them out and said, “It’s time to upgrade your planes.” A friend of mine “tweeted” back at me and he said, “You need to fly to better destinations.” I “tweeted” back to him—I said, “There’s no better destination than home.”

Dennis: Ooh!

Bob: Yes.

Dennis: There you go!

Bob: Yes; “Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home”; right?

Dennis: Well, I have to ask this; because she was snickering as you were telling that story. It’s like you don’t have any idea about the condition—

Bob: —what a bad airline is? [Laughter]

Dennis: Yes.

Katie Davis Majors joins us on the broadcast. Katie lives in Uganda.

2:00

Can you tell us a story of a flight on an airplane in Uganda?

Barbara: Or even a road, maybe. Driving a car down a road is probably just as bad.

Dennis: Oh, exactly.

Katie: Yes; the only time that I get in an airplane in Uganda would be to fly overseas, so then the airplane isn’t terrible; but the condition of the roads is not great.

Dennis: Well, I think there’s no question that we’re spoiled, here, in America with all of our services.

Bob: I think you’re right.

Dennis: Katie is the author of a new book called Daring to Hope: Finding God’s Goodness in the Broken and the Beautiful. She is a mom to 14; a wife to 1, Benji, which is a great story in and of itself; and they’ve had a little boy of their own named Noah.

This is a book about, really, finding God through the interruptions of life, what we would call an interruption. Bob was interrupted by the seat in his airplane. You were interrupted, one day, by a guy, who was on your doorstep, by the name of Mack.

3:00

You generally have taken care of girls, but this was a guy who needed help.

Katie: Right; yes. Mack was brought to me from one of the communities that we work in, by a social worker on our staff. She had found him, and he had been severely burned. His leg—you could almost see the bone, it had been burned so badly and so deeply.

You know, I thought I knew Mack. He was the village alcoholic. He was the guy who was getting in my way on my way to Bible study—he was the guy who was yelling profanities, and I would cover my children’s ears. I had shrugged him off as an annoyance—as that kind of person. So, when she showed up with him—my sweet social worker, Christine—I kind of shook my head at her; but he was badly hurt, so we proceeded to three different hospitals. We were told all three times that his leg would have to be amputated, because it was so badly injured.

4:00

The hospitals in Uganda, where we live, are pretty understaffed and very under-resourced. The doctor explained to me that his leg did have a chance if somebody could bandage it and dress it every single day; but he said, “My nursing staff here, with this many patients, we don’t have enough gauze, we don’t have strong enough antibiotics; we won’t be able to do this every day. If you’d like, I can show you how and you can do it at home.” I said, “Okay,” which is funny to me now. You know, sometimes, you wonder, “Okay; God, what?”—how did I…” / “I did?”

Barbara: “How did that come out of my mouth?” [Laughter]

Katie: I said, “That was fine”; but I did. We’ve been privileged, over the last many years, the house that we live in has a really simple guesthouse in the back—it’s really just a line of small rooms. So, we do have a place where it is safe to let other people live. They’re not inside our home, and so—

5:00

Dennis: Yes; that’s one of my first thoughts: “What’s a guy like this going to do in a house with so many young ladies?”

Katie: Right. So that’s why I felt safe about the fact that we had some good separation between our house and the guest home; and I have people like social workers on my staff who are able to come and help out with this sort of thing.

But he stayed—he wasn’t actually allowed to come up to the main house—so I would go back there on the porch of his room every day and dress his wound. Slowly, he began to sober up; and this really gentle, gen...