Alison, thank you for being my guest adoption blogger this week!
When Mark and I got married we very intentionally put the word “choose” in our vows. We wanted to declare that out of all the people we could have chosen, we chose each other to love… no matter what. We wanted to say that love is a choice, not a feeling. Regardless of what we feel about each other, we are committed to that person, we are committed to loving each other in the way that God has loved us.
How does this relate to adoption? Adoption, in the same way, is about choosing to love someone… no matter what. Just like finding our future spouse, falling in love, and filling out paperwork to make our marriage official, so we find our future child, fall in love through pictures and updates, and fill out paperwork to make this “marriage,” called adoption, official.
The glue that holds our marriage together is not feelings. It is a strong commitment, a choice, to love that person, even when they don’t seem loveable. Adoption is tough. It will not be easy to learn to live with this new child in our life. But it was hard learning to live with my new husband! God takes a strange man, puts him into my life, and then I have to learn how to live and love him. In the same way, God has picked out a strange child, will put them into my life, and I will learn to live and love them. I am not saying this in a bad way, just that it will be different than the previous norm. And that it IS possible to love the person that starts out as a stranger.
Some people will say that giving birth to a child is natural, and falling in love with that biological child is natural. But then when that child is older, they say things like, “well, I’m stuck with him, I don’t have a choice.” or “I guess she’s stuck with us as her parents. She didn’t have a choice.“ How can you say that about a child? You always have the choice to love that child… no matter what. Maybe those who never adopt may never truly understand the concept of loving a child by choice. Or maybe they do have a glimpse of what it means, through their experience with marriage. But our very first child will be coming to us because we choose to have them in our life, and because God had chosen them for our family.
I want our child to know that they are chosen… they are loved… no matter what. I think it almost makes sense to make the same kind of commitment to your child that you do for your spouse. Here’s part of what we vowed to each other, written out for our child:
Dear Child, as we commit to being your parents, we choose to love you in every circumstance that we face, no matter what our financial status or social standing, and regardless of your physical, mental, or emotional state. We choose to be loyal to you, to serve you – putting your interests before our own – to honor and respect you, speaking good of you and not evil. We choose to provide for your physical and spiritual well-being, to the best of our ability, in God’s strength, until we are separated by death.
As I think about what lies ahead for our family and the challenges to come, I am encouraged to apply my commitment of love to my child. This stranger-child may not like our family at first. This child may want to try everything they can to fight and run away from anything scary… including someone that may want to love them. This child may not love me back for the first couple of months, maybe not for a couple of years. But remember, love isn’t just a feeling.
This causes me to pause and consider the amazing love of my Heavenly Father. He is a Father who has chosen me for His family. I did not love Him at first. He chose me when I was hating Him. He chose to love me… no matter what.
I am one of God’s elect “who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood” (1 Peter 1:2 ).
He has adopted me into His family, He has made me His child, He has called me by His name.
“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1) What an example to follow as we choose to love our child in the many years to come…. no matter what!
