Why adopt?

The past year and a half have been a beautiful blur…engagement, marriage, honeymoon, moving to a new position at work, starting the process of becoming Foster/Adoptive parents (still ongoing), and purchasing and settling into (and fixing up) our new (to us) home has been amazing, crazy, and (sometimes) exhausting!  I am so thankful for the story God continues to write with me and that he saw fit to bring my story together with my husband's.  I remember when a friend of mine got married several years ago and she profoundly said that she saw their marriage as taking her ministry and his ministry and joining it to be better together than it could ever have been apart.  It took me this full 1.5 years of excitement and emotion to clearly see what our marriage ministry is…adoption! 

For both of us, the call to adopt started many years ago.  Personally, I remember wanting to adopt since I was in the 2nd grade.  It always filled my heart with excitement and joy to think of having a multi-ethnic, knit-together-by-God, united-nations-like family.  I can't say where it started but I know to where it matured.  I grew to understand that as a Christian, orphan care was to be a priority and it was a burden on my heart to share the beauty and blessing of the Gospel and my own adoption into the family of God through adopting children that needed an earthly home and a family. 

I always feared that I would have an uncomfortable conversation with my future husband, trying to convince him that adoption should be part of our story, and so over the years I prepared for that…luckily the godly man I was blessed enough to be joined with needed no convincing!  In fact, he brought it up!  We were on the same page when it came to adoption and we had shared motivations for opening our homes and lives to the blessing of children however God would choose!

I once read a quote from David Platt that said, "It's important to realize that we adopt not because we are rescuers. No. We adopt because we are rescued."  How sweet that truth is!  I was rescued into the family of God by Christ's blood and, having been rescued, the command to His children is to care for orphans in their distress and to be a blessing to others.  I know now and am learning more and more that this is not an easy call. It is not safe. It is not without heartache,  effort, and sacrifice.  It is (as I just recently heard from one of our favorite singers ) a little like dying.   Graciously we have the example of Christ who died on a cross on our behalf – for the joy of pleasing his Father! 

So when it gets hard, when the wait seems too long, when things suddenly change and the story I thought was being written begins to unravel into a new story, and when the burden seems too heavy, I remind my slumped shoulders to relax (His yoke is easy and His burden is light), I lift my eyes (to the rock which is higher than I am, to true and right and noble and praiseworthy things, to Christ in heaven), and my heart swells with peace and joy in the knowledge that I am not in control and this is not my story to write, this is not my story at all, it is His.  God writes every moment of our story. He ordains and controls all things and that is Really Good News! 

Part 2 to come...