Mommy Life: Adoption: answering God's call

At Boundless we're big fans of babies. Among the families of the staff (Steve, Motte, and Ted) there are 13 children, by birth and adoption. Now, in an interview just out with Focus on the Family's Citizen magazine, I write about Motte and Beth's journey to Ethiopia and adoption:

Browns-portrait

The Browns always wanted a big family, but weren't able to have more than two children by birth. They wanted to adopt a little girl from China and were deep into that process. "God closed that door," Beth says, "but the desire to adopt never left us."

"We then decided to adopt two older Ethiopians, one with special needs," recalls Motte, manager of marriage and parenting preparation at Focus on the Family. "When Beth told me they came with two more -- newborn twins -- I said 'No.'" He was sure four would be more than they could handle.

"I knew that if I did pray about it, God might and probably would have an answer I wouldn't like," Motte says. "I knew He would tell me to do it. It's His heart. All my objections would be from my own worldly perspective. God's truths about himself and what He values can be very inconvenient. And sure enough, as soon as I prayed about it, He had an answer."

As Steve and I wrote in Start Your Family, and the Brown's story models, "the choice to be fruitful is an enduring and courageous encounter with hope." In the words of author Mike Mason,

Every child is a fresh, unheard-of image of God, and children keep coming and coming because the world has not yet conceived of all the fullness of God's glory. ...characteristically when God does a brand-new thing, He does it through a child. And so the Bible is full of children and babies, godly infants who influenced the course of sacred history as profoundly as any adult has.

Four-new-browns

To the Browns, and all the other parents who have expanded their family by opening their homes to orphans, thank you. May God bless you this Advent season when we celebrate the coming of an adopted Bethlehem babe who would be King.

You know,when it comes right down to it, we are all adopted sons and daughters of God. If God is calling you to adopt, my advice is not to think too much about the challenges, consequences, the things that could go wrong, Just do it. Throughout the Bible God called men and women to do things they didn't feel capable of. The stories of their saying yes are the teachings god has given us to follow.

Throughout the ages, there have probably been millions of others God called to accept challenges who have thought things over carefully and then said no, We don't know their stories because there is not much to tell.

Will this be the year you do something unexpected - something that will be a living witness to God's love for us? Maybe it will be scary. And maybe people will think you're crazy.

But listen to God. And remember: he doesn't call the equipped - he equips the called.