On loving your child, from someone else

Last night while I dreamed I adopted a sweet girl named Abigail. I knew her before she was my daughter, and I believe her mum was a sister-friend of mine before she died. I remember being in a room of people and knowing my sister friend was never coming back. And I remember Abigail’s eyes staring up at me from under a white hood. She knew me, and as I picked her up she smiled, and I knew she was now mine to care for.

For those of you who have spent any time chatting about future babies, you know adoption is close to my heart. No one in my immediate family is adopted, and I only know of one in my husband’s, yet I know that someday not all our children will be biologically ours. I cry at the end of Annie. I cry when Gru tells Margo he’s never going to let her go again near the end of Despicable Me. And I completely lose it when Dominique is waiting for Anne at the very station she started her life at Green Gables (I love the movies probably just as much as the books, so I’m not picking my favourite part of either version). I used to babysit an adorable little girl who had been adopted from Haiti. We don’t live in the same city anymore and I honestly haven’t seen her in quite awhile, but think of her often. She may be the reason my heart was opened to adoption, but I know who placed it there. Ephesians 1:5 says “He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will…” And James 1:27 says that "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."

The Bible teaches us that adoption is a natural thing. Moses was adopted by Pharoh’s daughter. Esther was adopted by her uncle. Christ was adopted by his mother’s husband, Joseph. And we, as children of God have been adopted as well. (cue Third Day’s ‘Children of God’)

I don’t know where our children will come from. Our families like to joke that my husband and I will have a ‘colourful’ family because we really aren’t particular about where they came from. I believe God has already picked our children for us and is just waiting for the right time to make us parents (and trust me, I in no way think that is right now!).

Don’t get me wrong, I love pregnant bellies and newborns and am completely willing to go through every bought of nausea to hold my children. But I really want to be a mommy to someone who doesn’t have one.