Last week my niece and nephew “officially” joined our family! I have referenced a few times that my brother and sister in law have foster kiddos and these sweet babes are now officially a part of our family forever.
Wow! What a happy day it was when I got this picture text on their adoption day!
I was so overcome with joy and thankfulness for these precious kiddos “officially” joining our family, that I found myself spontaneously weeping in the Home Depot parking lot, folding laundry, in the middle of a Walgreen’s aisle.
I’ll never forget the day I first met my niece and nephew. Rene and I had flown to meet them last August and they were piled in the car half asleep when they picked us up at the airport.
I peaked my head in the back seat to catch a glimpse of my niece who opened her bright hazel eyes, and mischievously grinned at me behind the window pane revealing her twinkling zest for life I love so much about her. I looked at her baby blonde haired brother, sleeping so still beside her. He looked like an angel babe with his tow head and chubby cheeks.
Right then, I decided I was their Auntie, it didn’t matter that our gene pools were different, I didn’t care that I hadn’t seen their first days or knew what they looked like as infants. I wished I could have been there, but the lapse of time between their birth and our meeting was inconsequential in the depth of my love for them.
I was made to love them.
We spent one of my favorite weeks ever, getting to play with these cuties. I was completely undone with joy everyday that I was their Auntie.
And then we left, and I couldn’t stop thinking about them. Daytime, nighttime, they were as close as my next breath. When I thought about the possibility that I may never see them again, I would cry and then pray a prayer I had never prayed before, “Jesus please put these children in our family forever.”
One day, as I was praying for my niece and nephew, I told God that it really hurt- the waiting and wondering if they would be able to be adopted into our family. The longing in my heart to know for certain they could never be taken away from our family felt almost overwhelming.
He said “I know exactly how you feel.” I was praying the words from the heart of Our Father.
They are more than words to Him – they are His essence and heartbeat. Our Father God has been separated from all His beautiful children, separated not by His choice but by the sin we each have chosen.
His cry is “Come back to your Father, you are made to be in my family forever, you belong to me”
Giving my niece her first manicure!
Friends have asked me how our family feels about my niece and nephew being adopted and I can confidently say we are absolutely thrilled! We are thrilled and they are cherished with a unique sweetness from a newborn biological child…because I saw their faces before I knew they were ours. I hugged them, read cherub ears bed time stories and kissed their flushed cheeks – and then I asked for them.
They were chosen.
Our Father has chosen us – the children He made, the babes He formed and knows every intimate detail about. He longs for the souls He has lavished with looks of love.
It is someone’s adoption day today. But the adoption you are entering isn’t the kind with state legal documents , a courtroom judge and stuffy city building. The setting for this scene is inside the truest of place in your soul where your gracious and compassionate judge says “you deserved separation from me because of your sin, but I have made a way for you to come back into my family through the death and resurrection of my perfect son Jesus. ” Your adoption will be documented inside your heart and written forever in the Lamb’s book of Life (Revelation 21:27).
If your heart is crying, yes! I was made for more, I want to be reunited with my Father and adopted into His family forever….
There is no better opportunity than right now to say, yes to your Father who has been longing for you.
If you have already been adopted into the Family, then I am praying your soul would be re-awakened to the glory and joy of your salvation – that you were an orphan, but you are no longer and there is a place of secure and intimate belonging with your Father that will last through all eternity.
Adoption was our loving Father’s idea. He designed and created it and without it we would have no hope.
That’s the way it was with us before Christ came. We were like children; we were slaves to the basic spiritual principles of this world. But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. And because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, “Abba, Father.” Now you are no longer a slave but God’s own child. And since you are his child, God has made you his heir.
Galatians 4:3-7
Would you fall to your face with me in gratitude, stopping to let the wonder of the cross overwhelm you….and would you let it change you again… when we have a revelation of what He has done:
Instead of self righteous indignation over the people’s sin and brokenness…. we see an orphan looking for their family.
Instead of keeping our faith quiet to not “offend” anyone… we extend the invitation into the greatest family reunion there will ever be…happening in heaven.
Instead of losing ourselves to the temporal and trite…. we remember life isn’t about us, but about reuniting our lost family so no one is without an opportunity for their own adoption day.
Instead of giving up when we are rejected, despised or ridicule…we boldly come before our Father and say “Daddy, bring them to their adoption day.”
I don’t want to forget the joy of my adoption day and when I think of a certain twinkling hazel eyed little girl and chubby tow headed baby boy, the newest “official” members of our family… I don’t think I ever will.
How has your adoption day changed you?
