Happy Mother's Day

Tomorrow at church I am going to speak for a short time about our adoptions of Taevy, Samren, and Bright. When the pastor first asked me to speak "about adoption" what I thought about was a sort of motivational/inspirational talk about how great adoption is! So I wrote a rough draft of what I would say. But actually the pastor wanted me to give more of a testimony of our experiences with the adoption process. So I wrote something different to speak tomorow. What to do with the first draft? Well of course! I can post it on the good 'ol blog! ;-) I hope you all have a blessed Mother's Day.

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We haven’t had experience building our family in any other way, so I suppose to us building our family through adoption feels as natural as it is to most others to build their family through the mother’s womb. I can’t imagine my life without the three children the Lord has placed into our trust. Just as He chooses each little soul to place into a mother’s womb, He also chose the three souls that now call Eric and I mommy and daddy.

When we first adopted we did so because it was a means to an end. We wanted to be parents. But through that experience the Lord put inside me a deep-seeded passion to do what I can for orphaned children on earth. I cannot save all of the orphaned children in the world. But I can make a world of difference for one orphaned child at a time. And so can you.

If only 7% of the world’s Christians adopted 1 orphaned child, the world’s orphan population would disappear. Disappear! Imagine. The Lord calls us to care for orphans over 40 times in the bible. Now, I am not saying that every Christian family is called to adopt. But every Christian family IS called to care for the orphans of this world. What can you do? Giving financially is certainly beneficial, but what about your time? Do you have time to write to an orphaned child—just to let them know that someone in this world loves them? Do you have the resources to visit an orphanage and spend time simply loving the children? Do you have the financial ability to assist another family with adopting a child? Or might there be an empty place at your table?

Today is Mother’s Day so I’m going to talk to the moms for a minute. I’m glad to honor my mom and to be honored by my children on this special day, but now that my heart has been called to the plight of the orphan I cannot ignore those in this world who cannot celebrate a day like today.

How many children don’t have a mother to honor today? How many children wake up with a nightmare and have no mommy or daddy to come and comfort them? How many children don’t have a mommy to cook their food? How many have nobody to share with them about how, in fact, EVERY Christian is adopted into God’s family by the blood of Jesus? 143 million, and counting.

On Mother’s Day I think of the mothers in the world that do not have their children to honor them. They make the ultimate sacrifice by placing their child for adoption when they cannot care for them. Do they weep with joy or sadness today?

I think of Mrs. Ib in Ghana.

This is Mrs. Ib. I don’t know how many children Mrs. Ib has, but I know about the love she has for her son, Nang. Because of malnutrition her milk dried up and she was unable to feed her precious 4 month old son. Mrs. Ib went to a Nutrition Center in Northern Ghana for help. With better nutrition her milk returned but her son was too weak to suckle. Mrs. Ib isn’t a Christian. She doesn’t know our Lord. But our Lord knows her and He knows Nang. Out of love for her son Mrs. Ib chose for Nang to be adopted. She knows the likelihood of him living to even 5 years old is remote unless he is placed into a new loving family. Her sacrifice is great, because the love she has for her son is greater. The Lord blessed her to be Nang’s mother forever, even though he will grow up calling another woman “mommy.” Mrs. Ib now waits for another woman to stand up for her child and take him as her own.

Lots of people look at adoptive families and families with special needs kids and say, “I could never do that!” It’s true. You couldn’t. But the Lord can do it through you! The Lord may put a call of motherhood onto you that isn’t typical or common. Becoming a mother by giving birth is an amazing and miraculous thing—never to be seen as boring or ordinary! But if the Lord calls you to become a mother in a new way, I challenge you to listen. Don’t look away when you see an orphan with physical differences. Don’t allow yourself to be scared if the Lord lays a child with a chronic medical condition on your heart. Don’t say “I would have too many kids!” just because most people only have 2-4 kids. Don’t allow yourself to buy into satan’s lie that you could never love an adopted child “as much” as your biological children.

There are over 143 million orphans in the world today. The Lord doesn’t ask us to take this burden upon ourselves. He asks us to come along side Him—to be His hands and feet—because if we don’t do it, who will? Through a variety of circumstances the orphans in this world no longer have a mother to comfort them. They wait for women like each of you reading this—ordinary women who are called to do something out of the ordinary. They wait to call someone “mommy.”

James 1:27
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.