Samuel. Esther. Ruth. Moses. Dave Thomas. Malcolm X. Steve Jobs. Scott Hamilton. Marilyn Monroe. Melissa Gilbert. Babe Ruth. Faith Hill. Harry Carry. Eleanor Roosevelt. Leo Tolstoy. George Washington Carver. Edgar Alan Poe. Crazy Horse. Aristotle. Nancy Regan. ALL adopted. All born into one family and raised by another. All loved and cared for by someone without their same blood. Each with their own hurts, joy, failures and successes. Each with the permanent mark of God’s redeeming story…you were vulnerable, alone and unable to care for yourself and I sought you out to love you as my own. Adoption IS the Gospel story.
I’m sure every adoptive parent has a different on-ramp on their road to adoption, but the mileage is the same. Mine was on a plane, December 1994. I was seventeen and on my first trip to Seattle—the city that I now call my own. During the boarding process, a woman in a white t-shirt holding an Asian toddler passed on my left down the aisle. She didn’t bump me. The kid wasn’t screaming. No one smelled funny. There was no reason why this woman & child should have stood out to me. But the Voice within me that echoed as she passed me was significant: “That’ll be you”. Of course, at the time, I didn’t understand the magnitude of that prophetic statement. I nonchalantly tucked it away in the “Someday” file that, at the time, included riding in a hot air balloon and marrying Val Kilmer. (Hello, Top Gun!)
Over the next 15 years I kept a soft spot for adoption. I was drawn to the young and sick on missions trips. I focused on pediatric & international medicine in school & work. I gave faithfully to adoption organizations and was in awe of Steven Curtis and Mary Beth Chapman’s adoption story of their three daughters. Then one Sunday in November 2009 the Voice echoed again “It’s time”. Say WHAT?!! I knew instantly, the Lord was calling me, eh, tossing me from 30,000feet, onto the adoption road, but it would take me another 18months of personal struggle before I would finally say YES. YES to the Lord’s calling. YES to welcoming a child of a different race and with special needs into my home. YES to the financial struggles and social stigmas. YES to believing God’s plan for me and my family was FAR more important than my desire to marry Hugh Jackman (Sadly, Val didn’t age as well as I had hoped…). YES to understanding that God was not asking me to do anything I hadn’t already promised Him I would do…Go to the ends of the earth, and to care for the widow and the orphan (Matthew 28:19 & James 1:27). YES to realizing that is EXACTLY what God had done for me.
The Gospel is adoption and adoption is growing my family tree.
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