Maybe this is why.....

After my last post, God has shown me many things about possibly "why" adoption is so hard.

One of them is that He uses adoption to refine adoptive parents like nothing else can....it sure did me....all three times of my own and with each adoption I facilitate. I can see it in the adoptive families that I work with. Did I mention it is sometimes VERY difficult to be the person in the middle of the work that God is using to refine people? :) I am sure you pastors and pastor's wives out there can relate to that!

But as Noah was baptized last Sunday, I got a glimpse of something wonderful. I have to confess a little favoritism here over my biological children. I rejoiced when Callie accepted Christ and was baptized also...in fact we had a "Re-Birthday Party" to celebrate. We will have the same for Noah when life slows down enough to do it! But I have always wondered how I would react on the day that Noah made his statement public. Not just the reaction of a mother, but the reaction of a mother who didn't give birth to this child but knows that the whole purpose of him being in my family is to raise him up as a warrior in God's army? How would the deepest, innermost part of me react? Just like I thought I would! I rejoiced from my imost being; I wept like a baby! Then I gave my son a "high-five"!

Seriously, as John and I took communion with Noah for the first time, John leaned over and whispered to me "this is what it is all about". And I responded with, "this is why I push us so hard!". We both laughed! Later we talked about how humbling it was to watch Noah go under the water and then sit with him and take his first communion...both of us could not help but think of where he would be had God not picked him up out of the circumstances he was in and placed him in the middle of a family who wasn't even looking for a baby! Even now as I think about that, tears flow down my cheeks. What if I had not followed through when everyone around me thought I was nuts? What if I had let fear of the uknown or more importantly of the known things of his circumstance stop me from walking by faith? But because we persevered through fear and doubt, I have the awesome priveledge of leading this young boy to His Savior. I will fail him, I will not tell him the right things at times or be the example I should be, but even in my failures, God has allowed Noah to come to Him at the age of six. This is what it is all about! It is about raising up a young boy who would have been taken from drug house to drug house, but instead is sitting with his family reflecting on the sacrifice of a Man over 2000 years ago that allows him to have an intimate relationship with God and the promise of eternal life! It is about knowing that I have a young man in my house that will one day do great things for the kingdom because he will know nothing else to do because it is what he has lived his whole life.

Would the enemy let that happen with out a fight? I think not! He knows the impact these kids that are being adopted into Christian homes will have on this earth....this WHOLE earth! I have no doubt that many of the children coming home to families in our ministry will either return to impact their homeland or at the very least use the resources they have to impact the country of their birth. Recently even an official in this country expressed the same fear as his tribe is not the tribe of these children. To that I say, Praise God! Bring the children home so that they can be trained as warriors and fulfill all that God has called and gifted them to be!

So whether you are adopting domestically or internationally...whether you are just starting, are in the middle or just had one fall through. I can't answer all the why's. I don't understand all the struggles, but as I sat there that Sunday night and watched my husband baptize my oldest son, I wanted to get on the roof tops and scream, "All you people thinking about adoption, IT IS WORTH IT! This is living proof!" Adoption is worth every heart ache, every delay, every dollar spent, every sacrifice made, every sleepless night, every mile you have to travel, every tear you cry! It is worth it! Hang on! As a mother of two adopted children in my home, one in Sierra Leone West Africa, and one in the arms of Jesus, I can stand before you and honestly say, it is worth it! Hang on my dear friends, hang on! For a life is now sealed for ETERNITY and the enemy can do NOTHING about it! I can't help but think the miracle of adoption had at least a little bit to do with that! Praise God!