Couldn't Have Said It Better

A friend shared another family's blog with me, and I just had to repost their adoption announcement for you...

Adopting a child (and especially a child from Ethiopia!) is not something that I ever imagined us doing. Adoption was nowhere in my future plans. You see, I have learned that this is often how God works. We make plans for our life based on what sounds logical to us. We keep God in mind, of course, but we also give a lot of thought to what seems fulfilling to us. That’s when God steps in and says, “No, my child. Your life is not for your own fulfillment. It is a sacrifice to Me. Follow Me and I will show you how to have abundant life. I know that this wasn’t what you expected, and it doesn’t make sense to you right now. Trust Me. Obey Me, and you will never be sorry that you did.”

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When Madeline was about two months old, I asked Daniel the question: “If the hospital called and said that they had mistakenly sent us home with the wrong child, would you want to trade Madeline in for the child that was actually ours biologically?” We both realized that, without a doubt, the answer would be no. It was then that adoption first entered our minds. I realized that I do not love Madeline because she has my genes. I love her because I spend day and night with her, investing my all in her and constantly praying for her. That is what makes me her mommy.

I searched the Word for every scripture that I could find about adoption, and I encountered passage after passage in the Old Testament describing the special love and protection that God gives to the fatherless. He commanded his people to provide for them through benevolence and tithes, and He promises judgment if they ever mistreat them. He promises to be a Father to the fatherless, and He makes it clear that it is His will to set the lonely in families. (Psalm 68:5-6) He holds close those that are abandoned by their father and mother. (Psalm 27:10)

It has been my prayer for a long time now to have a heart more like HIS. To love who HE loves and to desire what HE desires. God has a special love for the orphan, and He desires that they be set in families. In what better way can we love those that He loves and be hurt by the injustice that hurts Him than to adopt a precious child?

As soon as we said “yes” to God by deciding to adopt, we found that so many things in our lives began to make sense. We have long questioned why we have been given such abundance spiritually, materially, and familial-ly, when so many in the world don’t have the food, shelter, or medical care they need just to survive. We have felt restless, knowing that we were certainly made for more than quietly living out our average American lives of abundance, going to work, going to church, and raising our 2.5 kids. How are we making a difference? We have been reading a lot of eye-opening books lately. In one of them, Red Letters, Tom Davis writes about what he believes would happen in the world if the church began to actually live out the words of Christ (written in red in many Bibles). We want to obey Jesus with all our hearts when He says to go to all the world with the gospel and to feed the hungry and clothe the needy.