Years ago I lived in the country of Haiti, working as a preschool teacher over about 20 precious orphans. They were so eager to learn. On the days when I made my way to their side of the compound, preschool box in hand, I could hear their anticipating giggles echo from buildings away. Their shining faces are implanted in my memory. They gave me a heart for adoption, and I wrote about it then from my "non-parental" perspective. As I watched these children wait for their adoptive parents to come get them, I saw first hand, the beauty of how God went through the most tedious, difficult, costly adoption process ever accomplished. God himself died as payment for closeness with Him. I live in the spiritual realm, what these children lived in the physical realm.
In our second year of marriage, we had a newborn baby boy plopped into our laps with only weeks of warning to prepare. We loved him as best as we knew how. We were trained in all the parental ways of baby rearing (diaper changing, feeding, sleeping, cleaning etc.) Our hearts were opened to a new perspective of parenting, sacrificing life to enable this little one's life. It was a step further into understanding the beauty of what I could only admire before. The knowledge and beauty of a godly family had begun, and I wasn't just admiring it, I was experiencing it. But there was still more to know.
So when my first biological daughter was born - I was in awe of how natural it felt. Being able to experience giving birth and nursing my very own baby who was made up of me and my husband's very DNA - it was just breath taking. I had no idea till that point just how perfectly my body and my role as mother were what I was MADE to be. I never expected this part of family to be so PART of me. So when God began to reintroduce adoption to Alex's and my heart especially the last 7 months, there is an even greater context for understanding the magnitude of adoption.
Adoption is not natural. I feel it spiritually and physically. A young mom friend of mine asked me recently how the bonding process is going and what that's like after having my own kids. I told her - it is something I have to fight in prayer for. It's something I have to ask God to enable and allow. I have to sacrifice and fight for that bond. Knowing just how sweet the closeness and oneness of children who are bonded to you only clarifies how these new children need it. And at every turn of growth it is as though my God is wanting to teach me a new aspect of his love for me, his adopted child.
He was in need of no extra fellowship outside of himself. He is the triune God, perfectly sufficient and satisfied within his own oneness. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit were and are one with each other in a way that we can only long for. I would liken a God fearing biological family to resemble the "natural" part of our triune God. It is normal to have a mother, father and children. Their roles differ, yet they share the same unit of a family. Similarly, It's natural that a child cries and is heard and cared for by their parents. It is natural to have stranger danger. It is natural to look for Mama when you fall and scrape your knee. It's natural to just look at your kids and melt with love. You wonder how you could love someone with such fierce fervor and it came from nothing they ever did. You just love them.
When I think about how God had what was good and normal in himself, I am humbled to pieces to think how God himself wanted me, a mere sinful, prideful human, to have the same inheritance that Jesus himself holds. I am shocked at the sacrifice my God took by KILLING his OWN son, the son who was part of himself, to welcome me, one who rejected him in sin. I look at my own two biological daughters and wince at times because of what I've asked them to live in welcoming these new children in. I too feel the sacrifice of breaking what was one in order to graft in what was not. Jesus bore MY shame and faced the ultimate consequence, because I was a child without hope. My rescuing came through Jesus' selfless givenness to make me part of his own reward. Those biological children have such a magnificent role. Displaying the heart of their parents by welcoming, sacrificing and sharing their own inheritance with these new children. He did all the work of living perfectly and dying perfectly in order for me to receive HIS gift. Now my job is to learn and comprehend the love and inheritance I gain through Jesus. Jesus gave everything - and through Jesus, I give everything in return.
It's not possible. It's not natural. Yet this impossible thing has given me eternal life and connection with God. I tremble at what God has put before us in adoption. I cannot do this thing. My biological daughters cannot do this thing. Yet in God's perfect grace, He does what only he can do to glorify himself and make himself known to this hopeless world. It's not natural, and I plead every day that God himself shows up in our home, that it becomes a blessing to his name and that the magnitude of the gospel would be displayed through HIS power in my weakness. I am in awe of those who have gone before us in this task. I see their faithfulness to walk a physical representation of a spiritual reality and am pressed to do the same. That is faith. Jesus lived it perfectly for 33 years on earth and we get to live it now. Choosing to let the spiritual reality change this earthly broken one. Believing that God will change earthly principalities to reflect his spiritual reality. Fixing our eyes on what is MORE real.
It's not natural. It's SUPER natural. Oh Lord God, come and do what only you can do. Infuse your earthly children with realities of heaven that cannot be explained by anything but Your very hand.
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