Differences between birthing and fostering…

Is there a difference between having had my biological son and fostering with the hopes to adopt? Or adoption in general? Yes, there are several differences. There are many, many more similarities, but the reality is there are some differences and I think it is important to be aware of them and talk about them. Some times I think the adoption world is too passionate about acting like things are 100% the same and I think this harms both the beauty of adoption and the beauty of birth. Both children are equally, 100% your children whether you adopt them or birth them, but how they come to be your children are very different experiences.

Differences (for me, of course others may have a different list!):

 #1) Energy Level. I have way more energy mothering a newborn child that I didn’t birth then I did with Judah. Lets be honest, for most women, childbirth is like getting hit by a truck (and for some of us...then having that truck reverse back over us).  It takes a month for our body to stop doing strange things (I’ll spare the details for those who have yet to experience this) and for the pain to subside, then several more months to be completely back to “normal”. If you nurse, your tired the entire first year of your child’s life (at least I was).

   So of course I am still very tired, still waking up throughout the night to comfort our precious baby. But even in my tiredness, it is much easier not having the physical pain to recoup from along with the chemical imbalance from hormones needed to produce milk.  

   Now this shouldn’t make adoptive moms feel any less “motherly” (trust me, you will be plenty tired if you are caring for a newborn…we don’t have to be the most tired possible to feel like we're doing our job as mamas) nor should it be a reason to only adopt, because mothering requires much greater sacrifice then a few months of pain.

#2) Nursing. Nursing was an amazing, wonderful experience and I am sad that I wasn’t able to experience nursing my older two children. If you have adopted children and been unable to have biological children, don’t feel guilty for feeling sad about the loss of nursing your child. It is natural and normal to desire to nurse. Being sad about this loss, does not mean that you  love your adopted child any less and either does wishing you could experience having biological children. Birth is the most natural thing in the world and that is why my children that I adopted tell me sometimes that they wish they could have come from my tummy. Because they love me and I am their mama. They know that the most natural way to come to us would have been through birth. But I tell them that while I also wish that was possible and would have been wonderful, that I would not trade the experience to adopt them for anything in the world. Because I didn’t get to choose my biological children, but I got to choose them. Also, I tell them they wouldn’t have the beautiful skin, eyes, nose, toes, or even process information the way they do had they come from my body. So it’s not that I love my children I adopted less because I didn’t get the experience of nursing and birthing them, it is that I love them so much that I wish I could spare them from every ounce of pain this world has to offer, including the loss of their biological family. However, I know that sparing your children from pain is impossible, so better to equip them for it.

    Sidenote: some adoptive mamas are able to nurse their children-it is expensive, challenging, and typically you still need to supplement…AND MANY moms who birth children and want to nurse are unable. So-again, this is not a good reason to adopt only or not to adopt at all.

#3) Exciement from loved ones.  This has been the hardest one for me emotionally. When I was pregnant with Judah everyone (EVERYONE) was ecstatic and talked non-stop about our coming baby.  Every week people asked me questions about how far along I was, what the gender was, etc, etc. This just wasn’t the same with deciding to foster baby #4.

    With fostering/adopting we have had to deal with a small group of people telling us we’re crazy, that we can’t save the whole world (duh!), that we have Savior-complexes, and stating their disagreement with our decision. Also, it has just been hard to have people in our inner circles who were excited about Judah being born, but were silent/asked no questions, showed no interest about the coming addition to our family. I am SO excited about what we are doing and naturally want people to be excited with me. But thankfully my husband, Vermon, is wonderful about pointing me to all the people who are excited and helping to remind me to love and overlook the offense I am tempted to take.  Not to mention, we do not live for the approval of man and after much prayer and processing, I am now thankful for a minority disapproval from people, because it shows me how easily I can put my trust in people, instead of the Lord. 

   All of that being said, MANY people were equally excited (and each of them now have a special place in my heart for that!) and people who I barely even know offered to help and serve us because they wanted to be a part of orphan care too. The blessings of those who have cared and surrounded our family with love and support far, far outweighs the few who haven’t. 

   

#4) Opportunity to Share the Gospel.  This is what MOST excites me. There are many, many more opportunities to share the gospel when you are fostering/adopting. Of course this happens in parenting, in general; however, I get asked ALL the time why we we are doing what we are doing.  I have been able to talk to my neighbors, starbucks employees,  family members, my children, the mailman, the grocery store clerk, and the guy sitting next to me on the airplane about WHY we decided to open our family to children who many people wouldn’t. It is more then just the great need, it is more then feeling sorry or trying to change the world or be a good person.  It is because Christ found me when I was on a path headed to destruction, rescued me from the pit of hell, and poured out his blood as a sacrifice to atone for my vast sins against God. Then, because of Christ’s blood, God adopted me and made me his child and a co-heir of Christ. I was dead, now I am alive. I was blind, now I see. I had a heart of stone, now a heart of flesh. I was an enemy of God, now a child. We do what we do out of an abundance of joy for the salvation offered to us in Christ Jesus!

#5) They aren't mine. :( This is different for those who get to adopt their children without fostering, but as a foster parent...these babies aren't "mine" legally and won't be anytime soon. It is really hard, painful, and sad to have a child leave that you love. I love each child as though they are mine, attach to each child as though they would be mine forever, and pray for each child as though they would be mine...but at any point the baby we are loving may get placed with a biological family member. This is hard, but it is worth it for many, many reasons (I'll save those reasons for another post). The reality is...even my oldest three don't belong to me and only the Lord knows the number of their days--so I just live obediently in the moment God's given me and try not to spend too much time thinking about what our family will look like a year from now!


Next post: Some of my favorite SIMILARITIES between birthing and fostering... 

The Naked and Vulnerable God

Here is my newest post up at Together for Adoption: 

“And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”  Luke 2:4-7

    How man times do we read these words during the Christmas season? These few verses are the inspiration for the nativity sets around our homes and churches. It is the inspiration for the Christmas pageants that children are currently practicing for. But even with reminders all around me during this season, I do not reflect enough on the reality that Mary gave birth to her firstborn son, Jesus, and laid him in a manger.

    It is easier for me to picture Jesus, fully God and fully human, as the Christ who died on the cross. I picture Christ the God-man as the one who turned over the tables in the temple and drove out the money changers, or as the great teacher who gathered crowds by the thousands, or as the healer of sick. I picture Christ the God-man as the one who was powerful enough to stop the crucifixion, yet willingly chose to submit himself to God the Father and bear the weight of his wrath for our sins.

    But then there are these precious verses in Luke chapter two that describe Jesus, fully God and fully human, as a newborn child. Helpless. Weak. Completely dependent on his mother and father for warmth, food, touch, shelter, and soothing. It feels God-like to think about Christ’s ministry on this earth. But Christ as an infant? Christ nursing, crying, needing to be swaddled, it just feels so…human.  As much as I like to talk about Christ being fully God and fully man, I probably spend much more time thinking about Christ being fully God. It is when I reflect on God the Son being laid in a manger, fully dependent on human, sinful parents, that I realize how uncomfortable I can feel with Christ’s humanity.

    But this is a season to think and praise God for his willingness to become human.  One moment, Christ was sharing perfect, eternal, complete union with God the Father and the next he was growing within the womb of Mary. It is miraculous, mind-boggling, truly foolishness if we think about it through the world’s wisdom. But this wonderful miracle is exactly what allows us to now relate to Christ as brother. Christ has an earthly father that cared for him, held him, and loved him. When Christ talks about his heavenly Father, he is speaking fully understanding and knowing what it was like to have an earthly father. When Christ calls believers “brothers and sisters” he is speaking from a full understanding of what it was like to have an earthly family. In order for us to have been adopted by God spiritually, God had to become fully human…and so, two thousand years ago, God was born, naked, weak, needy, crying and completely vulnerable. And then, Thirty-three years later, he died a bloody, shameful death in the same condition.

    And the glorious reality that we have such a gracious God as this, who would make himself human, should make us sing:  

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!" Luke 2:14

Marcel's Testimony...what Amazing Grace!

Marcel, our ten year old son, was baptized yesterday. It was so special to hear his explanation of how he was lost and then found. Marcel is incredibly articulate and described beautifully first how God found him physically through adoption, and then how God found him spiritually. He has such a precious heart and truly loves the Lord. I am so thankful for the gift he is to us. (Okay, enough of the proud-mom bragging). 

I am also very thankful for my grandfather, Arnold, and my father, Dennis. This weekend was their 35^th anniversary of committing their lives to Christ (they both answered the same alter call 35 years ago during a simple sermon at a small church in Rhode Island and dedicated their lives to Christ). Both my grandfather and father are heroes to Marcel (and myself!) and it was so special for Marcel to have two great grandfathers, a grandfather, and his father present. He is surrounded by wonderful men and quickly growing up into one himself.

Here are some excerpts from Marcel’s testimony that he read on Sunday. It was very powerful to witness and I hope it encourages you. Every word here is directly from Marcel's mouth, I just helped him with grammar and asked him a lot of questions to help him brainstorm all of his thoughts. He gave me permission to post this because he said he wants as many people to hear about how wonderful God is as possible:

"My Testimony" by Marcel Vermon Pierre

“My favorite song is “Amazing Grace” and the song says, “I once was lost, but now I am found. I was blind, but now I see.” I like these words because it describes me becoming a Christian.
    First, I was lost.
I was lost in real life, but also spiritually. I was lost in real life because I had a family that couldn’t take care of me. I was born in Nevada and the first 6 years of my life were abusive, but I was taken care of too, especially by my Grammy. But I was also lost spiritually. I knew that there was something that ruled over the world, I wasn’t an atheist, but I didn’t know that it was the God of the Bible that ruled the world. I used to have a lot of anger and even though I was an ok kid, I had an extremely bad temper.
    Then God found me.  First, God found me a family. Basically, I remember one day that I was playing with my camera robot when this couple named Dennae and Vermon came over. When I first saw my dad, Vermon, I thought that he was a giant compared to me and was a little afraid of him getting me. Then, I wish I would have jumped up on my dad, Vermon, and begged him to be my daddy, but instead I hid from him and waited for him to find me. But that’s okay that I didn’t beg my daddy to adopt me, because my mommy and daddy, Dennae and Vermon, had already seen me and they were the ones begging God to let me be adopted.  So God found me a family and let Mya and I stay together as brother and sister and then gave me another brother, Judah.
    Before I was a Christian, I didn’t understand why my life was so torn up and messy, but God took something really terrible and made it into something really wonderful. This is the first way that God began to show me his love by giving me a Christian family.
    Then, after God found me a family and saved me from my bad situation, God found me spiritually….and this makes me think of the part of the song that says, “I was blind, but now I see.”
    This is the main sermon I heard that helped me become a Christian. I was at Grant Park in VBS and Mr. JJ was talking about being blind. He had a candy bar and held it in the field while a blindfolded kid tried to find it.  The point of Mr. JJ’s story was that our sin makes us blind to God but Jesus is the one that can take off our blindfold so we can see God clearly. So I went home and I didn’t know if I wanted to be a Christian or not.
   The next day I went to my room and I was crying because I was thinking all about the sad things in my life. But God softened my heart and I realized I needed Jesus to be the king of my life. Becoming a Christian didn’t fix everything in my life. I still had some problems with anger and missing and worrying about my birth family. But what is so wonderful is that now when I do get angry or sad, I know God is forever my father and that I can stay in God’s family no matter what I say, or think, or do. Also, God has turned a lot of my anger and sadness into joy when I think about what Jesus did for me on the cross. And I am very thankful for my church family that I am going to get to play forever with in heaven…
 Being friends with God is so wonderful because like Psalm 23 says, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Because God is with me.” I am very glad “I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now can see.” 

Tim Chester and Relaxing in Trinitarian Love

Tim Chester is a pastor of the Crowded House in Sheffield, England and spoke to us today from John 17 on “Relaxing in Trinitarian Love”

 Most of the other talks I have summarized and posted my thoughts, but for this one I’m just posting my notes (my blogging while listening skills are fading J). I tried to type as fast as possible, so it’s as close to “quotes” as I could do. After listening to Tim a few times this week (and reading You Can Change and using the Porterbook curriculum) I’ve decided that I’m going to read everything he’s written. This is good stuff people...read a taste of it below. 

Tim Chester reminds us that the TRINITY is foundational to understanding why God adopted us.

Tim says if God wasn’t trinity then that would mean there was a time when God was not Father, not loving, not communicating…but for all eternity God was loving and communicating within the trinity.

God did not create us because he was deficient in himself. He did not need the world or need anything in the world. He created out of love because the very essence of God is LOVE.

Tim says, “God is not a ruler who becomes a father or who sometimes does fatherly-like things. No, first and foremost God is a God who loves us.”

 God forgives us, but also does so much more. He loves you and adopts you and calls you his child.

    Salvation is adoption because God is a Father. Before creation, God was not a frustrated ruler looking for someone to rule or a frustrated lover, looking for someone to love. No, God was a father who had been loving his son for all eternity.

--You cannot be claiming to be “god-like” if you are adopting out of need. That is not why God adopts us, so we should not adopt children to meet some human need for a child. If you adopt out of your emotional need to feel complete then you cannot love your child with the God-like love we have been loved with.

--What is true life? It is not having a child, but being a child of God.

God created us for his good out of the overflow of his love and glory.  In eternity, the father and son share glory in the father’s presence.

  

  God’s glory is God’s perfections pouring out of him, like the light radiating from the sun. Jesus reflects the glory of God. The light of God’s glory is perfectly reflected in the image or mirror of the Son.

   On a sunny day, we never worry about the sun running out of light or heat. We know that light and heat will pour out of the sun without fail. In the same way, God’s love is like the sun, pouring forth his beams of love. Our job is to sit and enjoy the warmth and energy of the warm sun. We are to relax in Trinitarian love.

Your first job as a Christian is to do nothing except to soak in the light of God’s love.

We live in a cold, graceless world and our job is to step out into the warmth of God’s love and be filled from him.

It is for God’s great pleasure that he loves us, adopts us…THIS is true grace. He isn’t just being “nice” to us, but salvation comes out of the overflow of God’s love.

Jesus wants people to be where he is. Where is the son? At the Father’s side. And that is where he wants his people to live.

Jesus knows the father and makes him known to us.

The greatest unkindness you can do to God the Father is not to believe he loves you.

 –John Owen

The WHOLE plan of salvation has as its goal your adoption by God. 

Tim quoted from 1 John 4 and I thought it fitting to end this post with these great words from God our Father:

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us.

(1 John 4:10-19 ESV)

Vermon Pierre on the gospel and trans-racial adoption

Just got to listen to my favorite preacher talk about race and trans-racial adoption (he's also pretty cute too ;)). Vermon is the lead pastor of our church in downtown Phoenix, Roosevelt Community Church, and we have a wonderfully diverse church of white, black, Asian, African, native, and Hispanic brothers and sisters in Christ.

I love hearing my husband talk about adoption and I love hearing him talk about race. Everything he said was right on. The session was taped and I will post the link once it is up on here because it is worth listening to every word.

Here are my favorite parts:

Some of the problems that happen when white parents adopt cross-ethnicity is the family emphasizing race too much or too little.

1. Families who talk too much about race.
-saying we want our kids to be "black" doesn't work. Black culture isn't monolithic. There are subcultures within the black culture so we need to make sure that we do not expose our kids to our one idea of black culture.
-sometimes the family views their white culture as negative for their children and so they over compensate based on, often, stereotypical views of what it means to "be black"

2. Families who talk too little about race
-there is a problem with divorcing your child completely from their culture. Your kids ARE your children, but they were not always your child. They have a story and they came from somewhere.

-the idea that your kids don't notice that the way they look is different from everyone around them is ignorant. Especially with the black/white reality...the history of racial separation was not that long ago.

-when your child from Korea gets adopted by your Idaho farming white family, she doesn't just become an Idaho white girl, but your family also becomes Korean. This is what Christ did with us...he became human so we could become righteousness.


If you adopt a child of a different race then your child WILL have tension. The tension is not a bad thing. It is nieve and ignorant to ignore that tension and it missed out on an opportunity to point your child to the gospel.

When we become believers we are placed IN Christ. We are not lost in Christ....but we are placed INto Christ. We do not become born into a people that makes my ethnicity insignificant. In Christ, our identities are redeemed and redeemed in a way that unites us to other people.

Many more great thoughts, but I can't post his manuscript, so just make sure you watch the video.

Here are his 4 take away points:

1. Know the theology of adoption. Knowing that God has adopted us to a family changes the way we see race. Revelation 7 paints a picture of every nation crying out to God from every tribe. When John lcoks at the multitudes of people he doesn't see one shade. He sees all sorts of different ethnicities. Ethnic designations remain in eternity, but all submitted under Christ.

We can help our children's identity issues by having a robust theology of salvation and how that relates to adoption.

2. Don't be afraid to talk to your children about race.


3. Your identity as a diverse family will be helped the more you are in diverse community.

4. Point out good historical role models from their racial/ethnic background AND their adoptive family background

5. Give your kids a gospel love for other cultures. Give your children Multi-cultural competency. They are citizens of heaven and that heavenly race is diverse.

Jeff Vanderstelt, the gospel, missional living, and adoption

   Jeff Vanderstelt is the pastor of Soma Community church. This is my 7^th or 8^th time hearing Jeff speak on missional living & the gospel and I am struck by how relevant and meaningful his words are each time he speaks.

You can read a fuller summary of Jeff’s talk at ZachNielson’s blog  and below are some of my take-aways and thoughts:

Jeff says that we are MOTIVATED to love because we were first loved and that we love in a SPECIFIC kind of way because of HOW God loved us.

We are a chosen people. If we don’t remember who we were before we were in Christ, we won’t appreciate who we are now in Christ. We will never care for the "least of these" like Jesus did until we realize that we were the least of these.

Who were we?

    We are, by nature, children of wrath.  We were sin. Enemies of God. Hated.

Who are we, because of the cross?

    We are children of God, we are righteousness, friends of God, LOVED….in Christ.

  This is part of why I love talking to my children about the reality that they were orphans, like ME, but if we believe in Christ then we are orphans no more… I don’t like using the word orphan to just describe a desperate physical state, because it is also a desperate spiritual state. It is vital that we remember who we were when we were spiritual orphans.  

   I was really moved by Jeff’s words to love like God because we understand and know God’s heart of love. For the nations to know God’s loving mercy, I need to know God’s heart for his people. Jeff says that knowing the heart of God’s love for you enables and empowers you to love people all around you like brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers. Let’s show the world God’s great love for the fatherless. 

Dan Cruver on God's Eternal Love

“God’s massive, cosmic story of adoption IS the real world” –Dan Cruver

Dan Cruver is the director of Together for Adoption and author of Reclaiming Adoption.

He just spoke to us from Psalm 36. His message was so powerful...not even sure how to sum it up. 

  

What does God really want from you?

Wow, isn’t this a question that I am sure every believer has questioned throughout their life.

Here are some verses to consider:

Micah 6:8- walk humbly, do justice

Psalm 86:3- give justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s case

James 1:26, 27- care for the orphan and widow, keep unstained from world

But does that “sum up” what God wants from us? Here are some other verses…

Matthew 22:37-love your God with all your heart, soul, and mind

Psalm 106:1- praise the Lord, for he is good

Is it one or the other? Absolutely NOT. Dan tells us that the question is a false question. It is NOT what does God want from you, but who is God. The answer? God is an eternal fountain.  

Dan gives an incredible illustration of us trying to drink from Niagra Falls…he talks about how foolish it would be to think that we could try to diminish Niagara from our tiny, little mouths.

Dan says, “God is an eternal fountain of love that is, by nature, a giver….We can’t live the Christian life well, if we think of God as primarily wanting from us.”

What does this mean for us as we care for orphans? Here are Dan’s 4 main points:

1. There is a strong connection in this Psalm to what Scripture calls

Sonship. Sonship means that we are GIVEN all the rights and privileges of THE Son (Jesus!) through adoption (chew on that for a bit!!)

2. Drinking from the fountain of the Father’s lavish delight in us

actually empowers us to live on the razor sharp edge of the world’s

profound brokenness.

3. Orphans need Christians who feast on the abundance of God’s

house and whom God causes to drink from the river of his delights

(Psalm 36:8).

4. Christians who experience God the Giver are much better equipped

  

Who is the God who GIVES?  Psalm 36:8 gives us that answer.  Psalm 36 is talking about God’s steadfast love and tells us that we are able to drink from the river of God’s delight.

We are given the river of God’s delight! I don’t think we even begin to grasp and understand what that means…

Dan makes the point that this eternal river of God’s love was, in fact, eternal.  Meaning, it has ALWAYS existed. God did not create love when he created earth. No, God has had a river of love flowing for eternity.

[sidebar…what is going to follow is going to be tricky to explain in a blog post…Christians will get it because we’ve read, studied it for a while, but my dear friends who read my blog who are still questioning Christianity, I promise this isn’t freaky sci-fi stuff, it is such a beautiful truth once you understand it....we might need to grab a cup of coffee and talk more about this in person. I’ll post Dan’s video clip on this once it’s up on the website, because he explains it so beautifully!]

Ok, so how does God’s love flow eternally? Through the trinity. God is 3 persons, but 1 God. He has ALWAYS been 3 persons and ALWAYS will be 3 persons, but he is without a DOUBT 1 God (we see it everywhere in scripture). God has ALWAYS, for all eternity,even before creation, had this perfect love that was flowing between the Father and the Son. 

And then God created! He made Adam and Eve and they drank from this perfect love, this fountain of living water! They communed perfectly with God almighty.

But they turned against God. Walked away from his eternal, perfect love. And the penalty for this was death. Because of this, humanities’ ability to participate in this great LOVE, to drink from this incredible fountain of LIFE has been severed.  We are cut off. But GOD…who is RICH in mercy and steadfast love…made us ALIVE in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2).

What God did was sacrifice HIS son…he ruptured this perfect love that had flowed between himself and the Son for ALL eternity, SO THAT we could be brought back in to this family of God!

This is a precious, incredible truth. Like I said in my talk on Gospel Suffering yesterday, we do NOT understand God’s love for us, because we do NOT understand God’s love for his SON. OH, if only we knew the DEPTHS of God’s love for Jesus, we would be broken by the reality that he sacrificed that perfect flowing river of love in order to bring us, wretched sinners, into his eternal family. What a glorious God we serve!

Tullian on the Gospel and the Law

Tullian Tchividjian is a pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Forida.

He spoke this afternoon on the law and the gospel. His talk came from Romans 7:7-8:4  His talk was about the Gospel and the Law...but it sparked wonderful thoughts about our adoption for me...here is my main thought after listening to his great message (followed by my general notes/thoughts from his sermon).

The LAW shows us the reality that we NEVER should have been adopted. Grace shows us that our adoption by God was ENTIRELY his work. And the finality of our adoption by God reminds us that it is God’s grace, not the law that KEEPS 

Tullian reminded us this afternoon how easy it is to think that the goodness of a deed makes us “godly.” Even as Christians, we tend to drift toward thinking that God is concerned mostly with the fact that we obey (but the reality is, God also cares about WHY we obey). 

He says, “Jesus demolishes ethical behavioralism, he smashes an external righteousness” Tullian went on to say that we are activists by nature and explains that the we naturally lean as humans is thinking God is lucky to have us. We naturally drift toward thinking we can earn favor with God through good works.

I spent some of my formative years as a child in a “sloppy agape” kind of church. We heard about God’s “agape” love all the time, but never about his law. If you are coming from a similar background, sometimes we think of the word “law” as a taboo Christian word. The word “law” seems like something for Jews or the Catholics, not something a grace-based Christian talked about.

Tullian spoke about the law in such a wonderful way. The “law” is far from being something Christians should know nothing about; rather, the “law” is actually good! It is a reflection of God’s perfect character. It is the law, Tullian says, that helps us to see God’s perfect nature. Romans shows us that it is because of the law that I even know I have lust, murderous thoughts, or a covetous heart. The law is a mirror to show me the darkness of my heart.

And that is where we draw the line in the sand. THAT is what the law does, but it is SO important to know what the law canNOT do:

 The law CAN show us our hearts, but it canNOT  cleans and regenerate our hearts.

 The law CAN show us God’s perfect nature, but it canNOT make us like Christ.

 The law CAN show us the depths of our sin, but it canNOT make us grow spiritually.

I also spent some of my formative years as a child in a more legalistic church background and this is where we get into trouble. If we are not aware of what the law canNOT do, then we will drift toward legalism. Tullian sums it up with one great word: “Slavery.” When we try to make the law do what it canNOT do we make ourselves slaves.

I agree with Tullian that we can be so quick to enslaving ourselves to the law, even though we have been made free from the law (Romans 8). This produces so many problems in the believers’ life and I see it in the women I counsel or talk to all the time. It produces pride when things are going well and it produces despair when life is hard. But it NEVER produces the gospel-centered life we are called to.

Tullian says, “You will NEVER, EVER find rescue for your weary soul by going INWARD to yourself.” He goes on to say that we KNOW that we only get INTO heaven by God, but we act like to “stay in” we have to look to ourselves.  He gave a great example of Joel Osteen and Bob Jones. Bob Jones was the poster boy for Christian fundamentalism when I was a Christian and isn’t someone most Christians want to identify themselves with. Tullian talks about how they are BOTH equally legalistic, because BOTH of them are telling you one thing: do more, try harder. Of course, “one does it with a stick and one with a carrot”, but they both tell  you…come do more.

“To say the law does not change us, it does NOT reduce the place the LAW has in our life.”  The LAW is to show us the depths of our darkness. The law shows us that our greatest problem is not patience, but idolatry…not anger, but murder…not lust, but adultery. The “law shows us that our best is never good enough, it smashes our rose color glasses that we think of ourselves through….the law constantly reminds us how dependant we are on the gospel.”

Okay….I know this is getting to be a longer post, so I will try to wrap it up soon. ALL that is really good…how does this tie in with adoption? Just a few of my quick thoughts on how adoption ties this all together:

-Adoption SCREAMS of God’s grace… We are reminded in Romans 8:1 of the reality that we have “no condemnation” in Christ and then a few verses later we are told about some of the REALITIES of this work that Christ did for us (look back to Romans 7 to see what Paul was just talking about). So after we are told that Christ has done EVERYTHING for us to save us by grace, Paul shows us a fruit of that grace in Romans 8:14-17. We are told that we are given the spirit of adoption as sons of God! We are given the gift to be able to call God, “Abba Father!” We are told that we became heirs of Christ. All of Romans 8 wraps up with how NOTHING can separate us from God’s love.

Loving Children When They're Unlovable

I talked to a foster parent recently who was explaining how she doesn’t know how you can get through foster care without first tasting the love of Christ. There is so much truth to that statement! Of course, we can be thankful for evidences of God’s common grace in enabling people who are not Christians to still love children, but at the end of the day, the best place to go to see perfect love for unlovable people is the cross.

Sometimes when we parent, our children are not particularly “lovable.” What parent looks at their 2 year old throwing a tantrum on the supermarket floor and says, “Oh, how adorable! I just want to give this child some hugs and kisses?” I have worked with many teenagers who were not the most inviting people to talk with and love on. Their parents even begin to talk about feeling intimidated by them and finding themselves tempted to withdraw from their kids. Or what about difficult things that go along with attachment disorders, autism, substance exposure, and past traumatic memories?

In parenting, as in every other area of life, the best way to grow in our ability to face difficult situations with joy is by understanding two very important truths:

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When Life Is Hard: Adoption Matters!

A complaint I often hear when I counsel women is that their life is hard. Sometimes it is in
relation to foster care or adoption. Often it is their marriage or their children. Perhaps it is difficulty with their job, their boss, their mother-in-law. Or it could be physical illness, infertility, exhaustion, singleness, business, depression, grief, loss…and I am sure that you can add to the list with many more difficult things.

Life can devastate us. We live in a world full of sin and evil and the weight of our broken world can feel overwhelming. Too often we respond to trials as though we do not deserve them, are surprised by them, or are unable to overcome them. But adoption gives us a different perspective when life is hard.

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