Chapter 3 – Jeremiah 31:3 “I have loved you with an everlasting love.  With unfailing love I have drawn you to Myself.”

In our flesh, we refuse to love when it becomes too “messy.”  We stomp our little human feet at our God and command He find another way.  We tell Him He has asked too much.  After all, we’re only human.  What was He thinking to expect so much of us?  Certainly, this must be a mistake.

“I have loved you with an everlasting love.”  He whispers time and again.  “Love as I have loved you.”  The impossible is now possible through His mighty strength, freely given to cover my weakness.

There are so many parallels in life between human adoption and spiritual adoption.  Parallels that allow us to see the heart of our Heavenly Father in ways we would not comprehend had He not created this analogy.  

In both the physical and the spiritual, people who do not belong in the family by birth, are grafted into a family supernaturally through adoption.  It is a covenant relationship, to be held in highest esteem.  It is a joyous reality.  It is the very reason angels celebrate when a broken person realizes they God has made it possible for them to believe, and now they are permanently grafted into God’s family tree.

It is why a family rejoices when they are finally handed the papers that say an adoption is final.  The grafting can begin.  This child belongs to them, legally and forever.  Now, the process of molding their lives together is no longer a risk, but a mandate.  A covenant. The journey begins.

Truthfully, however, grafting is painful.  Both the tree of origin, and the branch being grafted in, must first be cut.  As much as we rejoice, we now both realize we are bleeding, wounded, as never before.

The day we took our Little Girl to court for her final adoption, she was old enough to realize that this meant she was never returning home to her first country, her first home, her first mommy.  

Our entire family was singing joyfully as we drove away from the courthouse, laughing with the excitement that Little Girl had become a “real”  Anderson.  

I was joyfully singing as loud as the rest of them, until I realized that I didn’t hear Little Girl’s strong singing voice joining the family’s song.

She had suddenly realized that this arrangement was permanent.  She must let go of all that was before and let herself be grafted into all that was so new.  Although here she found safety, food, shelter, love, even Disneyland, it would never be enough to make her forget where she had been, and those who had loved her first.  It was forsaking her history to take and embrace a new history.  The cutting of her heart was excruciating.  She couldn’t sing.  She could only weep her silent tears.

I too began to cry, as I continued singing.

Often God’s broken babies feel the same.  They joyfully run into His arms the day they realize He is calling them to Himself.  “Poppee!”  They shout with tears as they run.  “Jesus!  My new family!”

Yet, as time goes on, we each realize that being part of God’s family is permanent.  It means we have to let go of our first self, of all that we were before He called us to Himself, of what brought us comfort before we knew God, releasing the story of our past to join His story of eternity.  We cannot forget, and begin to struggle with whether or not the cost is too high.  We weep over the removal of what we once found dear.

I can’t tell you how often we remind Little Girl that God has given us an everlasting love for her.  And yet, she must choose, every day, to accept this love and let the painful grafting continue.  We have taught her to distinguish what were God’s good gifts to her in the past, and what was a result of man’s willfulness and sin.

“We love you,” we whisper.  “We love you, we love you.”  She crawls under the covers and molds against our heartbeat as only a child from a third world country can do. She listens to our heartbeats becoming her own.  She understands that we mean life.  Without us she will die. 

“I love you,” God whispers, “I love you, I love you.”

I crawl under Your arm, take Your hand, and lay my head between Your shoulders to remind myself that an everlasting love is abundantly more than all I have left behind.  I can live if I surrender to You grafting me into Your Vine.  Without You, I will die.

Mold me into Yourself, dear Father.  My Poppee!  Cut off anything that is in the way of my becoming wholly Yours, but hold me tightly, while it hurts.  Teach me Your healing ways so that I might offer great comfort to these children You have chosen to graft into our family.

Teach all of us, Precious Lord, to bring comfort to every soul who is searching for their Kingdom Father.  

Graft us, Lord.  And kiss our wounds.