In Honor of Adoption Month

November is National Adoption Month, and I happen to be reading Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption by Katie Davis. Katie is a 22-year-old woman who traded the American dream (as a 19-year-old!) in order to live out a life of obedience to God by ministering in Uganda and subsequently adopting 14 Ugandan girls as her own.
This book has brought me to tears more than once, even as I have followed her blog for quite some time. Her story is outstanding and challenging and inspiring--you really must read this book for yourself. I'm sharing this excerpt on adoption because even though each adoption has its own unique story, her thoughts so beautifully relate my own heart that I thought they might bless someone else.

God has continued to show me that adoption is His heart, and it was becoming mine.

Adoption is wonderful and beautiful and the greatest blessing I have ever experienced. Adoption is also difficult and painful. Adoption is a beautiful picture of redemption. It is the Gospel in my living room. And sometimes, it's just hard.

As a parent, it's hard not to know when your daughter took her first steps or what her first word was or what she looked like in kindergarten. It's hard not to know where she slept and whose shoulder she cried on and what the scar on her eyebrow is from. It's hard to know that for ten years yours was not the shoulder she cried on and you were not the mommy she hugged.

As a child, it's hard to remember your biological parents' death, no matter how much you love your new mom. It's hard to have your mom be a different color than you because inevitably people are going to ask why. It's hard that your mom wasn't there for all the times you had no dinner and all the times you were sick and all the times you needed help with your homework. It's hard when you have to make up your birthday. It's hard when you can't understand the concept of being a family forever yet, because your first family wasn't forever.

Adoption is a redemptive response to a tragedy that happens in this broken world. And every single day, it is worth it, because adoption is God's heart. His Word says "In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will" (Ephesians 1:5). He sets the lonely in families (see Psalm 68:6). The first word that appears when I look up adoption in the dictionary is acceptance. God accepts me, adores me even, just as I am. And He wants me to accept those without families into my own. Adoption is the reason I can come before God's throne and beg Him for mercy, because He predestined me to be adopted as His child through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will--to the praise of His glorious grace.

My family, adopting these children, is not optional. It is not my good deed for the day; it is not what I am doing to "help out these poor kids." I adopt because God commands me to care for the orphans and the widows in their distress. I adopt because Jesus says that to whom much has been given, much will be demanded (see Luke 12:48) and because whoever finds his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for His sake will find it (see Matthew 10:39).

God was showing me His heart and His Word in new ways right there in the life I was living through the children I was serving (72-73).

Now go order her book and see how her example of service to the Lord affects you--c'mon, I dare you! wink