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.

Chapter 2 – John 16:33b  “Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows.  But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

A missionary visited our church.  I wish I could tell you who he was. I don’t remember.  Nevertheless, his message changed our lives.

He told of visiting a primitive tribe, somewhere in the Philippians.  After he spoke to the people, telling them of Jesus, he had walked around their village.  He came upon a little girl.  She was tied to a tree.

She was tied to a tree!  He asked the village people why this little girl was tied to a tree, and they explained that she could not be contained, that evil spirits had command over her and the only way they could keep her safe - keep the people around her safe - was to tie her to a tree.

He asked the village people if he could pray for her, to which they agreed hesitantly.  He prayed.  Instantly, she was healed.  The people cried out in awe.  Was this healing permanent?  

Eventually, carefully, cautiously, the villagers untied her from the tree and many of them became believers in Jesus Christ because of the miracle given on behalf of the little tree-girl.

I was stunned by the missionary’s story.  I had a little girl who, in my heart, was tied to a tree.  She had been so angry and so hurt from the time she came home, that I had begun to hold her away from the rest of our family to try to protect us.  From the earliest baby days, she would dig her little nails into our skin, pulling, ripping.  She would hit and scratch for reasons unknown.  She refused to obey.  She refused to be comforted when she was held.  She rejected relationships.

We didn’t know how to love her enough.  We didn’t know how to show her she was safe with us.  

Finally, in desperation, we began to “exist” together, rather than move forward together.  We, as a family, “tied her to a tree” to keep from being hurt any further.  

Feeling defeated, I realized that hatred toward this little person had begun to take root in my life.  I, who thought no child was beyond saving, was now struggling with all my might to live according to my convictions.  It was a place of great sorrow.  Of brokenness.  Of constant surrender.

But that day, sitting in the raspberry cushioned pew, listening to the missionary, I knew God was speaking to me.  He was asking me to pray that He would untie my little girl from the “tree” that was keeping her in bondage.  He was asking me to find a place where I could believe that He was capable of releasing her, releasing our family, from this crazy place of bondage.

Daily, I began to fall on my face before God and cry out to Him for His supernatural Love for my little girl.  I pleaded for healing for her heart, for compassion in mine, for creativity and wisdom, for His strength to overcome our humanity.  She was two years old when I began to pray.

She was four when she gave her heart to Jesus.  In the bathtub.  We were practicing verses for Bible Club when she suddenly realized that she needed to believe in Jesus.  

“I  believe in Jesus!  I want to obey Him.  I want Him to come into my heart!” She exclaimed.  So, we prayed together.  Right there.  Her in her birthday suit, and me, sitting there on the damp bathmat beside the tub.

My God untied her from the “tree”. His Tree commanded her release.  His blood cut loose the ropes of her bondage.  My spirit danced before my King, her hand in mine as we twirled before the Maker of the Universe, the Healer of the Broken.

God had received into His arms another broken baby.  Now it was His job to put the pieces back together.  We would simply join Him in His work.

Slowly, she began to change.  Slowly.  Maybe it was just that now we felt hope.  There would be months and years ahead of continuing to fight on her behalf to bring her healing in spirit, but my God had untied her from the “tree”.  He would continue to do His work in her life.  In our lives.

I’m holding up empty ropes to You, God.  I’m praising You, joining the songs of Your angels, for You are a mighty God.  Never again will these ropes bind my child.  Ever more, You will hold her close to Your heart.  

Take our empty ropes.  We don’t need them anymore.

Chapter 1 – Psalm 147:3   He heals the brokenhearted, binding up their wounds.

God loves broken babies.  He whispered to me in the dark one night while I was laying my heart at His feet and crying over His calling on my life.  He gently reminded me that the babies He adopts come to Him broken as well.

He has called my husband and me to broken babies.  Adopting them, keeping them, loving them, forever.  No matter what the cost.  

In the early days, after my husband and I realized that we were called to the ministry of adoption, we thought God was asking us to take multi-ethnic children.  Healthy multi-ethnic children.  We did not know that He was asking us to take in broken children.

What we did not know then was that every child comes broken.  Whether adopted into His family or ours,  we all come broken.

I lay in bed that night, weeping before my God.  I wept for my oldest child.  He was healthy in body, but broken in spirit.  He had come physically healthy to our family, and yet there was a sadness in his spirit, a brokenness we couldn’t touch and yet longed to bring Christ’s healing to.

I wept for my eldest daughter.  Her body had been ravaged in the womb with crack cocaine and alcohol.  She had come into the world drugged and silent…but then screamed for months as her next “fix” never came.  She was angry before she could speak.  I wept for her release from her bondage.

I wept for my youngest.  He too had begun life in the womb addicted to drugs.  Heroin had coursed through his veins before he even began to breathe.  He experienced drug withdrawal before he learned to smile, before he was held and rocked, before he ever heard a song.  He came into the world laughing, joyful, courageous, and sick.  He was sick so often, I wept for him.

I wept for my newest child.  Tucked in the middle of the family when she was six, she had already lived a lifetime of pain, and yet, couldn’t count to 10.  No matter how much we held her, coaxed her, promised her, there was a haunted look in her eyes.  She was determined to find joy, to give joy, but tears were always below the surface as she felt guilty each time she felt happy.  She wondered why her new daddy didn’t burn her with cigarettes like her first daddy.  She wondered if we were being truthful when we promised that we wouldn’t trick her one day and give her away like her first mommy.  No matter how much we reached out, there was always one more reminder of her brokenness.  I wept for her.

“God,” I said.  “We have sought to be faithful to Your call.  We have taken each child You have placed in our arms.  We have sought Your face daily in their lives.  We have laid each of them at the foot of Your Cross and petitioned You for Your wisdom.  Yet, they are broken.”  The tears flowed.  “Isn’t love enough to heal?!  Aren’t You going to fix them?”

“All of My adopted children come broken too,” He said.  “I AM spending a lifetime on each of them, putting the broken pieces back together.  Gluing the masterpieces I sculpted to perfection before they were born, shattered by a world gone mad, into new masterpieces.  Yet, the cracks, evidence of their brokenness, will always be there - until heaven.  The cracks are there so all will see that I AM God, the Healer of the brokenhearted. The Creator of the mosaic.”

The work is tedious, the results often barely seen, the journey long, and yet, I am honored to be included in Your work, God.  To represent You, to imitate You, to join You in loving broken babies.  

Please pass the glue.  I found another tiny piece.