It's an indescribable experience meeting the birth mother of your future son. One that's really difficult to put into words. Our visit with our birth mother and caseworkers went great last week. The five of us enjoyed a two hour lunch just chatting away about everything from surfing and sharks to family traditions and college football (of course!). After the lunch, we took some pictures and headed on our way. Our caseworker stayed back for a bit and talked with Matt and I and mentioned that we were allowed to invite our birth mother to hang out again since we were staying in town a couple of more days. We loved the idea of getting more time with her! So we asked her and she was so excited that we actually wanted that! So the next day, we met for lunch again. This lunch, we spent four hours talking...just the three of us. It was amazing and really completed the entire trip for us all. We had the opportunity to really talk. We talked about some fun, light hearted stuff but were also able to go deeper. To talk about our birth mother's conversion to the Lord, her hopes, her fears, her dreams. It was an incredible experience to know more about her heart and how God has moved in huge ways through this pregnancy and now through this adoption process. It was a lunch that the three of us will never, ever forget and a sweet moment that we can share with Joshua forever.
Meeting with her really had me thinking about the beauty of choosing life. In our world, young women are pressured to get an abortion, to just "take care of it" as an easy way out. It's amazing to get a front seat view of it all and be able to visibly see the positive and amazing effects of why choosing LIFE can only bring endless blessings and joy for SO many people. Not to mention, it brings conversion. Life conquers death...it conquers sin....it heals and redeems. I get SO excited knowing that the enemy was squashed. He had a plan and it backfired on him terribly because of a still small voice in a mother's heart that said, choose life. The enemy thought he got her when she chose to have premarital sex. He thought his work was done but she has been restored, redeemed and has come to know God in a huge way. She's changed and wanting to follow God passionately now. Wow.
You see, adoption brings life in a world that's saturated with death. You could even say that adoption is contagious. We truly believe that because our birth mother was adopted herself and because HER mother bravely chose life for her, she instinctively knew that life and adoption was the right thing to do. She knew that an abortion would just break her. I fiercely believe that if adoption is in your family... generations to come are more likely to choose life and choose adoption if they're in a difficult spot.
This amazing lady has been able to experience the freedom and forgiving power of our God through her pregnancy. She's been able to bless another couple (us!) with life when they're not able to have a family on their own. And we're able to build a relationship with her that's filled with conversations about life and faith and how good our God is even in the midst of trial. Matt and I are able to be a witness to her of a marriage built on God. She's able to witness to us the sacrificial love of a parent that is an absolute reflection of God's love for us. How can anything but beauty come from choosing life and choosing adoption?
God is good. He's breaking through our culture of death through adoption and we're incredibly humbled and blessed to be a part of that.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Saturday, August 3, 2013
What's In a Name?
It was really important to us to choose a name for our son. This little life had been without a name for most of his in utero life and we just felt it necessary to give him a name, after all, he IS a person and he IS our son. Although not legally yet, he's our son through and through.
I mentioned in an earlier post that during the very first call from our caseworker giving us the news that we were matched, I asked a rather natural question, was the baby a boy or a girl. Upon hearing the caseworker say, "It's a boy!", something inside of me yelled out the name Joshua. It was seriously almost like I recognized him as my son and I called out his name in excitement. It was one of the strangest moments but one that I hope I never forget.
So...his first name is Joshua. Not only is it the name my heart cried out immediately but also happens to be in Matt and mine's top two or three name choices for boy names.
Joshua is a strong name. Joshua was a warrior in the Old Testament. From my understanding he was a man that showed huge courage in the face of great responsibility. He was like the right hand man to Moses through the 40 years that the Jewish people wandered the desert. Joshua successfully led the people of God out of the desert to conquer their enemies and enter the promised land. Some scholars say that Joshua was like a foreshadowing to Jesus. What Moses, who represented the law, was unable to accomplish, Joshua did, by leading the people into the promised land. This points to what Jesus did on the cross, defeating the enemy, satan, and leading people to eternity with God (the promised land!).
So, I pray my son will be a true warrior for the Lord. That through obedience, faith and dependence on God, he will bring others to Christ in his life.
Choosing Joshua's middle name was a bit more challenging. There are SO many great names! Matt wanted us to pray through a few for a little while to make sure we choose the right middle name for him. So we prayed. And after a little while, Matt felt confident that his middle name was supposed to be Dominic. I would say that we both really like this name but Matt really sealed the deal on choosing this middle name for Joshua, which I like that he chose it for him. :)
Saint Dominic was a spanish priest and the founder of the Order of Preachers, the Dominican order. Saint Dominic was named after Saint Dominic of Silos, who is the patron saint of hopeful mothers. He was born into a wealthy family but also a holy one. His mother was beatified by Pope Leo XII in 1828. Pretty cool. He was a scholar of theology and the truth and teachings of the Church were things he spent his life defending, in an age where great heresy engulfed the world. But he was also a man of great charity and love. When a famine hit Spain in 1191, Dominic gave away his money and sold his clothes, furniture and precious manuscripts to feed the hungry.
Our prayer is that our son, Joshua Dominic, will be a warrior for the Lord and defend and spread Christ's truth through faith, obedience to God, and love, into a world saturated by relativism.
OH and one really awesome God thing. After we had chosen the name Joshua Dominic for our son, our caseworker scheduled our trip to meet our birth mother for the first time. It's next week, on August 8th (prayers would be great please!) and I noticed yesterday that August 8th is the feast of Saint Dominic!! How awesome is that? The very first time we are near our son and hopefully feel him kick will be on his feast day! God is good and always showing us, He's looking out. :)
I mentioned in an earlier post that during the very first call from our caseworker giving us the news that we were matched, I asked a rather natural question, was the baby a boy or a girl. Upon hearing the caseworker say, "It's a boy!", something inside of me yelled out the name Joshua. It was seriously almost like I recognized him as my son and I called out his name in excitement. It was one of the strangest moments but one that I hope I never forget.
So...his first name is Joshua. Not only is it the name my heart cried out immediately but also happens to be in Matt and mine's top two or three name choices for boy names.
Joshua is a strong name. Joshua was a warrior in the Old Testament. From my understanding he was a man that showed huge courage in the face of great responsibility. He was like the right hand man to Moses through the 40 years that the Jewish people wandered the desert. Joshua successfully led the people of God out of the desert to conquer their enemies and enter the promised land. Some scholars say that Joshua was like a foreshadowing to Jesus. What Moses, who represented the law, was unable to accomplish, Joshua did, by leading the people into the promised land. This points to what Jesus did on the cross, defeating the enemy, satan, and leading people to eternity with God (the promised land!).
So, I pray my son will be a true warrior for the Lord. That through obedience, faith and dependence on God, he will bring others to Christ in his life.
Choosing Joshua's middle name was a bit more challenging. There are SO many great names! Matt wanted us to pray through a few for a little while to make sure we choose the right middle name for him. So we prayed. And after a little while, Matt felt confident that his middle name was supposed to be Dominic. I would say that we both really like this name but Matt really sealed the deal on choosing this middle name for Joshua, which I like that he chose it for him. :)
Saint Dominic was a spanish priest and the founder of the Order of Preachers, the Dominican order. Saint Dominic was named after Saint Dominic of Silos, who is the patron saint of hopeful mothers. He was born into a wealthy family but also a holy one. His mother was beatified by Pope Leo XII in 1828. Pretty cool. He was a scholar of theology and the truth and teachings of the Church were things he spent his life defending, in an age where great heresy engulfed the world. But he was also a man of great charity and love. When a famine hit Spain in 1191, Dominic gave away his money and sold his clothes, furniture and precious manuscripts to feed the hungry.
Our prayer is that our son, Joshua Dominic, will be a warrior for the Lord and defend and spread Christ's truth through faith, obedience to God, and love, into a world saturated by relativism.
"Now then," said Joshua, "throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel." And the people said to Joshua, "We will serve the Lord our God and obey him."- Joshua 24:23-24
OH and one really awesome God thing. After we had chosen the name Joshua Dominic for our son, our caseworker scheduled our trip to meet our birth mother for the first time. It's next week, on August 8th (prayers would be great please!) and I noticed yesterday that August 8th is the feast of Saint Dominic!! How awesome is that? The very first time we are near our son and hopefully feel him kick will be on his feast day! God is good and always showing us, He's looking out. :)
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