In honor of National Adoption Awareness Month, I’m sharing stories from other adoptive families. Having these other adoptive moms share pieces of what God has done in their families through adoption is one of my favorite parts of my book, “Peace in the Process: How Adoption Built My Faith & My Family,” so I wanted to give you have a peek into the community of adoptive mommas God has built in my life.

Today’s guest is Melody Hester. We’re online friends who connected through blogging and then adoption. She considers infertility, miscarriage, and adoption to be painfully beautiful crucibles that brought her closer to Jesus. She blogs about life at www.lifeisabowlofwedgies.com.

*****

From the time our kids were babies we would recount the day we brought them home from the adoption agency. Complete with detail that included sounds – sound of the phone ringing when we “got the call” and unfortunately even the sound of the police siren pulling us over because we were so excited to get our new baby home that we were speeding. Ooops!

For months and years after we would tell the story the same way and the kids picked up on all the parts of the story so that it soon became their story to tell.

As our children got older the story stayed the same and wasn’t shared as often but harder questions came up along the way. Sometimes it would be in the middle of our son building Legos on the floor. He’d say, “Why would anybody give up their baby?” Other times out of the blue he would point to a random woman and say, “Could that be the lady whose tummy I grew in?”

For adoption to be talked about
openly is a beautiful thing.

{Tweet that.}

They don’t ask these questions in the middle of reading a book on adoption. It’s always when you least expect it and out of nowhere. But it should tell us that these are thoughts going through their minds even when they’re not saying it. So for it to come out in the open is a beautiful thing. Embrace it and don’t be afraid to talk about it.

Innate feelings of rejection and abandonment are natural for anyone and especially that of an adopted child. And no matter how positive you are about the birth parents situation (and we are very positive focusing on the loving decision she made to place through adoption) and no matter how quickly you bonded and are loving toward your children, they may feel a deep sense of abandonment that they might not even be able to express in words.

The ages of six to twelve are important years in developing identity. In these years you might have difficult but good conversations. Life Science class will ask your child to write down their recessive and dominant genes. They might be the only one in class with a blank paper. That’s hard. But redeem this difficult moment for a better understanding of our true identity being in Christ alone, not our genetic makeup. We are image bearers of Jesus Christ. Before they were born God knew what they would look like and where they would call home and who they’d call Mom and Dad. That’s just awesome!

Oh, and what about the people in the Bible who were adopted? We talk about them a lot, too. Moses and, of course, Jesus – we forget about that sometimes, don’t we?

I now look back on some of the hard conversations with our children and I’m thankful we chose to talk through them. Even the times we had no answer, and the pain and wounds were raw. Prayer covers you through those times.

Once your child is adopted into Christ’s family that also is a beautiful thing. Our son said, “Hey, I’ve been adopted twice now!” when he became a Christian. Over time I saw a confidence build inside of him. As his faith grew in Christ so did the assurance of his identity as a believer and as a part of our family. And isn’t that what we desire most? For our kids to walk closely with Jesus on this earth as His adopted children.

*****

*****

 Loading InLinkz ...