Are adopted children loved as much as bio-kids? I propose they might be even more loved. Plus, it demonstrates how deeply God loves us. Having children is fun! And a massive sacrifice of self, time, and finances. To take that on, an adoptive parent completely and intentionally chooses to give to and love a child who is no relation, will never look like them, and may eventually throw them to the wind. This is a marvel of love. And in all likelihood, the baby comes with baggage: fear of abandonment, feelings of rejection, genetic mood disorders, and a desperate neediness for extra love and resolve. Plus, an extra dollop of love on top of that. Yet this is exactly how God loves me, needing extra.
Adoption is a gift and a trauma. The child is ripped from the natural family and poked into a new, unfamiliar family. Poverty may shift to prosperity, hunger to health. Shifts of culture, race, language, or climate feel like sand dune treks in a wind storm. Abuse victims rescued into safety plummet into post-trauma freefall. Whatever the changes, all three parties experience anguish. The biological family is wounded to be in such a place to lose a child. The adoptive family may have suffered years of infertility and longing. The sweet baby has bonded with the mother in the womb and is ripped from everything familiar.
As an adoptive mom, I longed for a child for 17 years. Bringing home a beautiful baby was the greatest relief, joy, and hope to flood our lives. Challenges with the bio-mom tempered my sparkling halcyon days. One day after she changed her mind, I went to a friend’s house and walked straight into the pool with my jeans and tennies on. I was a broken mess. God bless my dear friend who jumped right in after me. When bio-mom changed her mind again, it felt like the hammer game at the fair where I had flung to the top, bashed my head on the bell, and crashed back down to the ground. Flying to the top again, I waited to be hurtled into the mud.
What joy to provide a home to a baby with an uncertain future. The bio-mom parented other children and later lost them to the state for many years. Through all of that, I never doubted that adopting the children was a gift from God to me as well as a gift from the birthmom to me. The adoption was also a gift from me to the birthmom and from me to the children. The children had no choice and no voice. Altogether adoption can be an emotional high, a crushing sadness, and an astounding gift.
What I never, for even a second, understood or imagined occurred when we carried the baby over the threshold of our home. God changed something in my heart, transforming me, creating a profound, never-ending love, and shocking protective instincts. The children didn’t come from my body or my questionable gene pool but the attachment was forever undoubtable. It’s like God super-glued them right in the middle of my heart. And we all know what happens when you try to remove something super-glued to your skin. Yeah, no more skin. If they left my heart, it’d rip an aorta and I would die.
I stayed home with them as long as I could. I danced with them, played with them, chased them, read to them. I learned whatever interested them. We cooked together, walked together, and went everywhere together.
The saddest part is that the adoptees often feel unloved. Unlovable. I heard an adoptee say, “Bio-mom didn’t love me; therefore, I am unlovable.” Meanwhile, I’m so mushy with love, that it’s slopping over the edges. You’re practically awake all night if they have so much as a hangnail. You sacrifice haircuts, nails, and new clothes so you can pay for their Senior trip to South America. You work sick because you save all your sick leave for them. You hate when you can’t fix their problems with milk and stories anymore. You coach a sport you don’t know so they can play. You beg the teachers for another chance. You volunteer for things you loathe. You still want to kiss boo-boos when they are tweens. Yeah, I got laughed at a lot.
One day, I thought “God adopted me. Me.” Realizing how deeply I love my children, I was gobsmacked. I felt the most loved and cherished I have ever felt in my life. 1 John 3:1a “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”
My overwhelming love for my children looks like a grain of sand on the seashore of God’s love. Ephesians 1:4-5 says, “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.”
When you read about and contemplate the extreme measures God went through to adopt us, to make us His children, do you see it? He gave His son, so you could be His child. He gave His son for my son. That just makes me leaky-eyed. I’m going to be honest. I wouldn’t give my son up to save anyone. Sorry. Truth. It’s nigh upon impossible to wrap my mind around God loving me so much that he gave up His son to adopt me. To adopt me. That’s the kind of love adoption means for the adoptive parent. I so wish the kids could see it and feel it.
Romans 8:15 AMP “For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading again to fear [of God’s judgment], but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons [the Spirit producing sonship] by which we [joyfully] cry, ‘Abba! Father!’”
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