The Father's Heart Compels Me to Adopt

Grace's 7th Birthday Party- October 25, 2009

Some of the most asked questions I hear are:

Why did you decide to adopt?
Why did you adopt overseas and not here in America where there are so many orphans already?
And why special needs?

The most obvious or expected answer might be that I will point you to James 1:27 (Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.) or tell you that God laid adoption on my heart as a small child. These would be true answers. But honestly, it is much deeper than that. We might have started our first adoption because of these reasons but now it is so much more.

I was once an orphan astray from my Heavenly Father but when He came to me, a became alive for the very first time. As I stand naked before Him, flaws and all, I am overwhelmed in joyful tears that I have a Daddy who is not critical, who sees potential and knows my heart. I am blessed to have a Daddy who speaks to me intimately and shows me those things that matter to Him. I have a Daddy who never leaves, holds me when I have fallen and wipes away my tears. I have a Daddy that defends me and enables me. When you meet the Father's love you are unable to contain it. The Father's heart is neverending, it overflows and it touches others. Adoption is perhaps the most beautiful expression of our Father's love for us. The more I grow as a daughter, the more I grow as a mother. The Father's love residing inside fills our hearts with more and more capacity to love His children and to be vessels for Him to express that love in real human tangible ways. It is not a feeling of obligation but, wow, I get to be used by you to fill the heart of another, to the LEAST. It is an honor you know. It is an honor to be entrusted with the defenseless, the weak, the rejected. I don't think there is any act the Lord sees upon this earth more beautiful because it is His essence. We see it expressed in the life of Jesus.

We adopted overseas because our hearts were burdened. We didn't decide to NOT adopt a child from America and at any moment the Lord should direct us in this way, we are eager to respond with a YES! The Lord also revealed to us that those children with special needs are the least likely to be adopted, least likely to receive medical care (let alone anything else)and most likely to die if left in an institution. We are witnesses of a real life miracle. We have in our home a child that had a very slim chance of life outside of a mental institution. A child who once was described as "low mental functioning, on the autism spectrum and fetal alcohol syndrome." Boy, weren't those scary words to hear. But that's just it. That was mans words, not God's. God says, this is my creation and she is good. There is work involved, there is time involved, there is a need for flexibility but then there is GRACE. God's grace is a haven for which I reside. And in that residence is the unfolding story, blossoming eruption over time of all that God has placed inside of our Grace Marina. This is truth. Not where she came from, not what she looked like, acted like, or was defined as but what she is becoming because of love. The more time passes I realize that I have special needs too. Needs only my Father in Heaven can meet.

It is the intimate journey that our Father has walked alongside revealing His plan for us that leads us in the way we will go. This is true for our entire life, not just adoption! Don't get caught up in what others are doing, get caught up with what God is doing with you. He loves you, He loves you, He loves you!