This post is dedicated primarily to
Derek’s personal journey of being led to adoption. As such, it is written in first person from
Derek’s perspective.
The road for me was in some ways
similar to Andrea, but I was relatively delayed in strongly considering
adoption because of my numerous daily distractions, mostly in the form of
personal and professional responsibilities.
Some of the more pointed questions were put off. For a long time, I conveniently
procrastinated a confrontation with the central issues of my heart concerning
adoption.
The most appropriate way I can
describe my spiritual stance during the June 2010 to December 2011 season is
“simple faith.” Though we discussed
infertility, I didn’t entertain it as a major problem because we had already
conceived and birthed 1 child. If the
miracle could happen once, then it could happen again. God’s timing will be perfect. We’ll keep trying and keep praying, and as
long as we stay aligned with Him and sensitive to His leading, it will happen
when He says so.
As more
time went by, I became aware of Andrea’s concerns, and we ran some tests. Still, I believed it would happen when the time
was right. In the background, there was
always the thought of adoption. We just
didn’t know if or when. And so, when Andrea
and I more seriously discussed the prospect of adoption in December 2011, it
wasn’t in the forefront of my mind, but it didn’t blindside me either. I knew that our family was going to grow one
way or another, and we needed to be seeking God intently along those lines for
His plan.
I had
been spending more time in the Word and prayer via my involvement with a men’s
small group bible study every other week.
The time I spent in prayer began to lean more toward asking questions
about adoption. Was I ready to father a child that was “not my own?” Could I successfully do it? Where were the pitfalls? What are my personal limitations? Was I ready?
How would I even know if I was ready?
How would I discern the timing for such a thing as adoption?
These
and other questions were daunting to me during those first few weeks. I have spent a significant amount of time in
my life seeking God’s will for myself and my own decisions regarding life
choices involving school, work, and relationships. There is a certain amount of known risk in
those things. And if I mess up, the
repercussions often fall primarily on me.
These questions about adoption seemed different to me. In my early thought patterns, if I messed up
thoroughly with regard to the lifelong commitment of adopting a child, then the
child would be significantly damaged, and this was unacceptable.
Adoption? Do I have it within me to do this well? The answer is pretty important, or at least I
imagined it being important to the child that would hypothetically end up
within our care. The situation seems
akin to the first time I was the doctor running a “code blue” at the
hospital. The fear of failure was
palpable within me, lined up in opposition to focused concentration and
decision making under intense pressure, with a life hanging in the
balance. But there’s a difference… a
code blue rarely lasts longer than 30 minutes.
Adoption is for the rest of my life.
Getting over the hump of these
questions took time. Meanwhile, God was
providing clues to help me out. As we
mentioned in the previous blog, there were several “words in due season” that
were spoken to us… more than could be ignored or shrugged off as coincidental
or random chance. If you have ever tried
to hear God speak to you as you inquire of Him regarding a really important
decision, then you know the process is often frustrating at times. Other times, it’s easy as pie. Receiving these various words was
encouraging, but it still didn’t answer the specific question for me.
Josiah, my 3 year old son, was
helpful to me in this season. Every
parent knows that the daily words and actions of your children both challenge
and confirm your dedication to them.
They regularly test your parenting mettle with their proclivity to
disobedience, stubbornness, deception, manipulation, selfishness, and the other
spontaneous defecations of the soul that we have come to associate with human
sinful nature. However, they also say
and do things that make you so proud and confident that you are here on earth
for this season to support, guide, teach, nourish, love, and be loved by them
through childhood into adulthood and beyond.
The little steps along the way are priceless. Josiah likes to wrestle and play rough with
me. He thrives on believing that he has
something on the inside that rivals the strength that he senses from me. When he’s not trying to “win,” he is quick to
express love and affection on a 3 year old level.
While interacting with Josiah, I
pondered, “my relationship with my son is so special to me… I cherish it as one
of the top 5 most important things in my life.
Am I capable of loving another child, not originally my own, just the
same as I love Josiah?” Can I do
that? That was a hard question. I hesitated.
I needed weeks to think about that, and pray. The answer did not come quickly, and it did
not come from me. My Heavenly Father
answered by simply repeating His personal testimony to me.
It comes back to that old Christian
cliché that the answer to every
question is “Jesus”. We laugh
about it sometimes, but it actually ends up being true in one way or
another. The Father adopted every person who
would receive the free gift of salvation by grace through faith in the sinless
life and death of Jesus Christ on the cross and His resurrection. He gave His Son, the most important person to
Him, to suffer and die as payment in exchange for the opportunity to be in
closer relationship to those that He would be able to adopt via His ultimate
sacrifice. He wanted to be able to love
and enjoy me, as His son, in the same way that He loved and enjoyed His Son.
Now He lives in me. Jesus.
The Holy Spirit. How am I able to
do anything, anyway? I have life by the grace of God. I get up and brush my teeth with the strength
He provides. I grew, learned, and passed
tests in school by trusting in Him and following the directions that He gave to
me. I love and support my wife with
wisdom from Him. I drive to work and
make decisions every day, and whatever favor or success I experience is only
because He allows it and pours His favor over me. Every aspect of everything that I do or am
able to do traces back to Him, His support of me, and the relationship that I
have with Him.
So, was I ready to father a child
that was “not my own”? Adoption? Do I have it within me to do this well? Yes. Yes! God showed me that I have it within me to do
it well because He has it within Him to do it well, and He is within me. I am called and compelled to do things that
look like Him. Having been created in
His image, any movement of my heart that mimics the movements of His heart is
supported and empowered by His presence within me. Simply, God backs me up when I am led by Him
to make choices or behave in ways that bring glory to Him. Any project I undertake in His image by His
leading is something that I can do well, because it looks like Him. God adopted, and He is in me, leading me to
adopt, so I can adopt and do it well by His grace.
Acting in a way that imitates God
is risky in the eyes of the world. It
often requires sacrifice. It may be very
expensive, even to the point of being ridiculous. It can appear foolish to many people. It can result in
various forms of persecution. And there
are other repercussions. Just like God
on so many occasions seems to be against the odds and risking everything in His
unending state of divine faithfulness, so to imitate Him involves being placed
in a similar position at times. But God
does the things He does because He knows the outcome of that behavior has an
eternal reward. Adoption as it is found
in Romans chapter eight is no exception.
God thinks eternally, and He wants me to think that way, too.
With that Spirit of revelation
alive in me, it really came down to a simple choice. Did I want to adopt? With all that Andrea and I had been through
up to this point, I did not hesitate at this question. “Yes”
was my answer.
Was I ready? Yes, on some levels, but probably not on many
other levels. But God revealed to me
that it didn’t really matter if I was ready.
Was I ready to be a perfect husband when I married Andrea? Was I ready to be a perfect father when
Josiah was born? No, and no. But it doesn’t matter. That’s where dependence on relationship with
God comes in. He helps me every step of
the way, and by His grace I’m better every day.
I’m sure there are thousands of roads
of thought that have led a myriad of fathers to the conclusion that they are
going to enter into adoption. Without
going into all the tributaries, this was the primary river of thought that led
me to my conclusion, and when Andrea and I finally talked about it, I felt good
about the decision, even though some parts of me were still admittedly
ignorant, naïve, and afraid.
And that discussion brings us
chronologically to somewhere in May 2012, when Andrea and I sat down to talk
about what was yet needed for us to move forward in the process of planning for
an adoption.
In the next post, we will begin
sharing how we began to move forward together in agreement with each other and
take some tangible steps toward adoption.
