Sometimes God calls you to hard things. Hard things usually involve more than one heart and lots of expectations. This is the case in our adoption. We have agreed and wanted an open adoption with our birth parents. This is both beautiful and hard. Beautiful because it allows for healing, open communication, opportunities for the child to have questions answered in the future, and most of all, an opportunity to share Jesus. Hard because you have to set boundaries, you have to stop trying to live up to their expectations in parenting, you have to let them go so they can heal, and most of all, you have to watch them struggle with their own choices as they learn a new role.
Our story has been long in coming. We spent months in conversations, emails, and Skype calls before we were chosen. We later found out that the birth father originally wanted a different couple. We worked together with birth parents to ease the transition, including them flying back with us and spending several days in our home. We took pictures together, we wept together, we struggled to find our footing together, and we comforted each other. Watching them walk out that door together for last time, I sobbed deep heart sobs as the weight of their grief crushed me. Brian comforted me as I gave in to all the hard moments of the previous weeks and months.
We turned away and began the task of reassuring our son that he was loved, not abandoned. That the choices made would not crush him but were ordained by God for his betterment. Days, weeks, and now months later we have developed trust, albeit fragile. We have developed a healthy relationship with birth parents where in the beginning it was demanding, hard, and harsh with grief. We have gently taught him about Jesus, the one that loves him more than all of his parents can imagine. We have watched him learn to pray, to sing about the one that made him, and to rest in comfort that he is safe. We have sent emails to the birth parents of him praying, singing and talking about Jesus. We have given credit to God that he is adjusting and thriving. Slowly but surely we are seeing an acknowledgement of God in those missives that flow back and forth between the 4 parents that love our son so much.
Last week I received a package in the mail, one that brought me to tears. It held two precious gifts from our birth mother. One was a necklace for me, acknowledging Adi as our child. The second was a bracelet for Anna Beth with Indian symbols from Adi’s heritage. The note with the gifts stated that both had deep meaning and were as special as we were. I sent birth mom an email and asked her what the bracelet meant and what she sent back has me undone. The bracelet pictured below is a symbol of the strong bond between a sister and brother. Typically the brother wears it as a promise to be a protector for his sister. In this case, the birth mom felt that Anna Beth was more of Adi’s protector and that Adi would one day earn the privilege of wearing it. In that moment, I watched as I saw my daughter’s eyes soften and fill with love towards her brother, that at times, can be hard to live beside.
Sometimes God calls us to hard things but there is joy and growth in the journey. There are hearts that change, soften and move towards our Father’s heart. We are praying that God does big things not just in ours and Adi’s heart but also in the broken hearts of our birth parents. God’s purpose is not always clear but there is purpose. There is always the plan of drawing us near. He will do anything and everything to draw us unto himself. He loves us enough to require us to labor, journey, and even suffer as he proves his love towards us.
So many times I have wondered what would have happened if we had quit the adoption process. We were so close to stopping, thinking we had not truly heard God’s call to this. We labored in prayer and could not gain peace to stop…just a few weeks later God brought Adi’s story into our lives. God equips us for every path/challenge he tasks us with. Our hard, at this time, is wrapped up in the most perfect set of brown eyes you can imagine. It requires us to be diligent in our relationships with God, our marriage, our children, and our birth parents. It is exhausting, taxes our limits of patience and grows our capacity to love. Oh friends…the beauty in the hard is so amazing that I could not have imagined it. If given the opportunity, I would choose it all over again. I would weep all those tears, I would grieve deeply, and I would choose to have my heart crushed. My prayer is that I would always be open to walking the hard rather than skipping through the easy.
