Adoption

It seems like it is all around us these past few months!! Most recently with Miss Meili coming home followed shortly after by Miss Zuri and Miss Zinea, the beautiful faces of God's promise. How incredible to see them, to touch them, to hear their laughter. When Meili giggled the other night, be still my heart, I soooo loved the sound.

All this adoption had got me thinking...from Worship for Orphans, to Orphan Sunday, then Voices, and the coming home of my friends sweet daughters, and of course Hope's referral anniversary and then on December 20th her adoptions day. 4 years ago I saw my girl for the first time in the Miami airport, quiet, shy, covered in scabies, and patches of dry hair on her head...and now she is loud, silly, joyful, has glowing skin, and for the first time can tuck her hair behind her ears...she is so very excited about that. Anyways it got me thinking about adoption and what it is and most of all what it is NOT. It is NOT a mission, it is NOT saving a child, it is NOT a cause. Adoption is how God builds families. I know I have told our call to Hope many times but maybe what I have not told is what God did NOT say. He did NOT say Malia did you know that Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere? It is the 4th hungriest country in the world? Did you know that Haiti has the highest rates of infant, under-five and maternal mortality in the Western hemisphere. Diarrhoea, respiratory infections, malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS are the leading causes of death? He said none of these things that night in October of 2001, no He said, Malia you have a daughter in Haiti. He planted a seed of adoption in my heart and over the next three years He watered it until Hope grew. I do not believe that Gods plan for the world would leave children as orphans, that war, famine, and disease would rob children of their parents. That mothers would be put in a position to place their children up for adoption because they could not afford to feed them, this is the reality of a fallen world, but Psalm 68:6 says, “God sets the lonely in families”. I believe that in His sovereignty God knew that Emilia would not be able to keep Hope and so He placed her in my heart, to grow as my child and in His perfect way and in His perfect timing He brought Hope home to her forever family. That is adoption. I say this because at the Orphan Sunday event something happened that only fueled my fire that i need to make this clear, please do not get me wrong, it was for all intents and purposes a great success and I love Steven Curtis Chapman and have NO doubt in my mind that God is using him mightily to aid the cause of orphans. Ok that being said here is what happened, in the beginning of the show they had all these pictures of children and a challenge of sorts to help the fatherless and orphan and that a way to do that would be by adoption, it was proposed in such a way to meet a need, not answer a call. My dad always says as Christians we don't meet needs, we answer His call. I'm sitting there thinking in my head that I might have said it differently when I glanced down at my daughters sitting next to each other and I watched Damaris look at Hope in a way that I had never seen her look, and quite frankly never want to see again. As she sat and listened and saw pictures of waiting children she put her hand on Hope and looked at her with a look of sympathy, she looked at her like she was an orphan.

Damaris has always looked at Hope as her sister, yes she knows Hope's birth situation, she knows she was in an orphanage, she knows that she was born in a third world country, but she has always known that Hope is her sister, that God placed her in our family, we were not adopting to do our part in saving the world, we were obeying our Lord when He said go get your daughter.

I think what really gets me upset about this is thinking that Hope might one day think that she was adopted because I was trying to do good, to save her. The thought of that hurts me and scares me and so I will continue to tell her daily that I love her, just as Jesus tells me daily that He loves me. He adopted me because I grew in His heart and He brought me into His forever family. He never felt sorry for me or pitied me, He simply loved me as His own....amazing.

I was reading a blog the other night and a mom has two adopted sons from Ethiopia and is faced with the question by many, why Ethiopia, why not America, why not this or that? Jen and I talked about this with Meili when someone asked her why China? my answer to all the questions, why Haiti, why Ethiopia? why China? why Uganda? why domestic? because that is where our children are. Because God builds families through adoption and He knows our children while they were in their mothers womb, whether my womb or Emilia's He knew them, the plan for their lives, the parents and the siblings they would have.

Life is back to normal, Damaris looks at Hope like her pesky little sister once again, but it was a good reminder for me as an adoptive mom to not let anyone else label my girl, to continue to remind all of my children of God's sovereignty, His plan, our spiritual adoption stories.

What does this mean for the orphan? Because they are out there, an estimated 143 million of them. If adoption is a call to build families but not necessarily for everyone then what do we do with 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." Adoption is not for everyone but caring for the orphan is. God is calling His church to respond, not the church as an institution, the people that make up the church. He is calling us.

143 million. I want to ask you to imagine these children but I know that that is impossible, it is truly beyond our comprehension to do so….so then what do we do with a number so great. A number that numbs our senses, that removes the faces, names and stories of the children it represents. How do we fight a statistic that we can’t wrap our head around? We give the statistic a face, we find out their story, and we call them by name. Personally, the way that our family looks after the orphan in distress is through World Vision sponsorship and gift catalog, through Samaritan's Purse shoebox program, and supporting missionaries. There are so many organizations in so many countries that we have no excuse but to do something no matter how small it may seem.