What comes to mind when you hear the word adoption?
For us, it seems to have always been something that other people do. Some desire to have children or want to add to their family, in other cases perhaps a step-parent is given rights that a biological parent gave up after a divorce, or it's a fad humanitarian project, or possibly it is done out of compassion for children needing loving homes. But adoption has never been a subject we really talked about. And as we have prayed for numeric additions to our family, we began asking God why we are having to wait so long, what is His purpose in our waiting?
Is it coincidental that our last name is Waits?
As we began to search for answers to those questions, we found the Bible says, "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart" (Psalm 37:4). But even this brought on more questions. How long will we have to wait before He gives us the desires of our hearts?
We began to think that if we could just read our Bible's more, pray harder, be more faithful; then perhaps God would finally give us the desires of our heart. But as time moved forward the wait became longer, and still we found ourselves desiring children.
As impatience grew to bitterness, and bitterness to resentment, before long we began to feel like we were being punished for something. The Bible says in Hebrews 12:7, "Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons." And the writer of Hebrews was right when he said, "All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful..." (Heb. 12:11a).
Sorrowful is right. Had we done something wrong that God would be disciplining us? It took a while before we could answer that question; there is a reason God disciplines His children. That passage goes on to say, "Yet to those who have been trained by it (discipline), afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness" (Heb. 12:11b).
It's hard to see how trials can produce peaceful fruit when you're in the thick of the storm. It isn't until the storm is over that light begins to shine and the fruit begins to bloom. I believe this is why the Bible tells us to "strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed" (Hebrews 12:12).
It tooks some time for us to figure it out, but what the Bible is telling us is that God's purpose in our discipline, His purpose in our trials is so that later they will produce a harvest of righteousness and peace. Who would have ever thought that the conclusion to our unhappiness would not be the answer we were hoping for and yet we would find peace in it? This contradicts our logical way of thinking; we had been expecting a particular answer to our prayers; unfulfilled desires. But God had other plans in mind.
We found that something needed to be healed but could not be because we had not made level paths for our feet. The Bible says, "In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight" (Proverbs 3:6). What ailed us was not physical, but spiritual. It was not until we fully submitted to God's plan for our lives and found rest in knowing His plans may not be ours before the spiritual healing began.
"Delight yourself in the Lord..." I say it again, "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." The problem of sin is that we are by nature selfishly motivated. When we pray, "I want, I need, I desire...," we are thinking only of ourselves. It isn't until we begin to pray "Not my will, Lord, but yours..." that God gives us a desire for His plan, His way, and on His time.
It wasn't until we had reached this point that God began to show us part of His plan. As we began to discover the world of adoption; this quiet place that seldom gets talked about, we began to discover that there are millions of children all over the world without families. And as we learned more about orphans who are just as needy for mommies and daddies as they are for children, the more our hearts began to break for these orphans with uncertain futures ahead of them.
Is adoption plan B? Is it what people do when they can't seem to have children of their own? No, adoption is plan A. It is the means in which God gives children to loving families, and loving families to children who desperately need them. Right now there are children who are desperate for loving families; they are desperate for mom's and dad's to love them; they are desperate to belong to someone. It is our prayer that by belonging to someone, they will also be given the chance to belong to the One, God the Father, who has adopted us into His family.
With love,
The Waits Bunch
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