Our adoption story really begins and ends with grace.
Through undeserved grace, God stepped into our lives when we were hopeless and needed forgiveness and made a way for us to be adopted into His family as sons and daughters.
As our family began to grow, God burdened our hearts for the needs of the fatherless. That is His heart, and He made it our heart as well.
Soon the question changed from “Why adopt?” To “Why not adopt?”
So we started on the journey to find a little girl that needed a family. Before she was even born, we were seeking her.
The grace cycle was continuing.
We love because He first loved us.
We know what love is, what grace is, because of Christ.
Adoption is totally undeserved and unexpected on the part of the orphan. Our little girl couldn’t fathom how drastically her life was about to change that day we met her in an Ethiopian orphanage.
But starting the adoption journey wasn’t the end of the grace cycle.
God had burdened our hearts to adopt. That much was true. But we had no way of paying the huge financial costs on our own. This is where God’s grace shows up in amazement and splendor.
He could have plopped down $35,000 in our laps when we stepped out in obedience to His calling on our family to adopt.
But instead He mobilized hundreds of friends and family to Just Show Up.
To Just Show Up and share generously with us in many totally unexpected ways.
To Just Show Up and be God’s hands and feet in our lives during the adoption.
Every time an adoption fee had to be paid, God miraculously paid it in full. Right on time.
Money came in from people generously saving their spare change, slipping us $20 bills, contributing to a huge yard sale, and many more ways. And through grant organizations whose donors we have never met, but who have significantly touched our lives.
And I pray that those friends and family who were such an integral piece of the puzzle in bringing Anna Rakeb home from Ethiopia received great joy in knowing they were making a difference.
By choosing to Just Show Up, they were a part in the story God was and is writing in the life of a former orphan. Now our cherished daughter. And one day, we pray, a daughter of the King.
{Linking up our Adoption Just Show Up story at MundaneFaithfulness.com}
