Are You Able to have Your Own Children?... {Our Adoption Story}

Note: Thinking about these friends today, who meet their Meika on this special Monday. 

Friends who responded to His call to help the orphan. And so they took this flight to the other side of the globe to embrace their sweet Chinese girl.

We can't wait to meet her.

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You could be matched with a child as early as Spring, she writes, my eyes widen as I re-read her words on the screen.

Her email goes on to list all these factors that could delay the inevitable... sickness, caseload, delay with paperwork, canceled appointments...

Still, Spring? It seems so soon.

And I laugh as I think, so does that mean I'm entering my third trimester?

I realize how that might be simpler. For this belly to swell, and family know what to expect, because this is what young couples do, they wed, and if they want and are able too, have biological children, and showers, and due dates.

So when this couple mentions their desire to adopt after two years of marriage the raised eyebrows aren't unexpected. And my handyman reminds me of how the questions will come.

Are you able to have your own children?

Do you think you will eventually have your own children?

And I stumble over my words... because yes, well I'm not sure... we haven't tried. Lord willing?

Help, Lord?

I see the origin of these questions... I bet I would ask them too if I were them talking to this girl. Because adoption can so often be a plan B, or plan C. Or something to consider when you're older.

But for this couple, it's just the plan. And somehow it doesn't fit into how things usually go... it's not what fills my Facebook news feed, or Twitter, or Pinterest.

And we confess that this couple didn't wake up one morning with a longing to have our own children, or help children at risk in our city... quite the opposite actually. We wake up and enjoy this quiet home.

So it was a relief when this author threw cold water on this girl's face, and helped her see into His plan for us,

"Adoption is not just about couples who want children, or who want more children. Adoption is about an entire culture within our churches, a culture that sees adoption as part of our Great Commission mandate and as a sign of the gospel itself."

Russell D Moore, Adopted for Life

I see Him teaching us, every day, and helping us understand this plan.

We're trying fervently to take notes, and learn, and be faithful, and carry out one of the greatest lessons that He showed us by example.

I seem Him writing it over and over on this chalkboard, circling it, pointing to it.

He adopted us, orphans, lost, broken into His family... "with a right to all of this grace, to all of this glory...

... The New Testament continually points to our adoption in Christ in order to show us that we're really, really wanted here in the Father's house. The Spirit is continually telling the people of Christ that they, we, are 'blessed' in Christ through adoption (Eph. 1:3, 5)" (Moore)...

This song starts to play from the speakers over in the other room.

And I smile at this screen as I write, so thankful to be adopted into His family, and so ready to respond.