Adoption, Redemption

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.