A powerful purpose
I stumbled across this image on the Internet recently and immediately associated it with my adoption.
“You were an answer to prayer,” my mother said to me when we discussed how their adoption of me came about.
Her statement caused me to catch my breath as I felt my heart skip a beat.
I was an answer to prayer.
Imagine two people praying to the Almighty God – the Creator who spoke the world into existence – for a baby and they receive you. Wow. God choosing me as a gift for someone – that in itself is a gift – to me.
Truly, God meant it when He said: “Can a mother forget her baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you” (Isa 49:15).
And He didn’t. When my birth mother decided she couldn’t keep me and wanted to ensure that her baby girl was given to a happy, Christian home, God looked down from Heaven, saw my mother and father and said: “This baby for that couple.”
The fact that my father had always wanted a little girl with brown eyes and blonde hair had everything to do with it.
Adoptees are a gift from God to their adoptive parents. That you were given to them specifically is no accident. God had a definite purpose in mind when He caused you to come into each others’ lives. Even if your adoptive situation was not a happy one, it’s important to know that God can turn any evil into good to suit His divine purpose – if you allow Him to by submitting to His will.
It’s Powerful stuff. And it’s ours for the taking.
Go on, take it.
Someone's Daughter 
Thank you for your post Aurette. I’m so happy to find an adoptee blog from a writer who has a positive outlook on adoption.
I blog about this same question regarding God and Adoption as a fellow adoptee and Christian. The N.T. scriptures that speak of being “adopted” as God’s children can more accurately be translated as “reunited” as God’s children. My blog posts under “God & Adoption” have more about this. I’m so glad to have found your book and blog!
I am really trying to reconcile this post with what I now know of your story (e.g., you have read the Primal Wound, you have felt abandoned, etc.). You are not some unconcious adoptee. How can you turn around and provide justification for this system that uses religious beliefs/so-called morals to coerce young women into abandoning their own children? What about the pain and devastation that relinquishment causes these young women? What about the lifelong pain of being abandoned, being ripped from one’s natural family? Do you really think that is the will of your god? If so, what a terrible god.
I know it is not God’s will. He has given us free will and a woman’s choice to relinquish her child is exactly that – her choice. God has nothing to do with it. He does not interfere with our choices. If He did, then we would not have free will, would we? I fully understand the pain women experience after relinquishing their child, but that is the consequences of their choice. It has nothing to do with God. However, if we submit to His will and become wholly dependent on Him, He can turn the situation – any situation – into good. That’s what my parents did. They prayed for a child. He gave them me. My birth-mother, who chose to give me up (God had nothing to do with it) now knows her baby was not placed into a bad situation. My parents’ prayers were answered. I received a wonderful upbringing. That is not terrible.
So when children are born into homes where they are abused (to death sometimes) is it also a case of: God looked down from Heaven, saw my mother and father and said: “This baby for that couple.”
or are you that special?
Aurette I have to agree 100 % with you. Let us not forget that we as humans have choices to make and then the consequences to bear for the choices we make. The Lord doesn’t make us do ANYTHING !! HE does indeed turn every bad situation into a good one if we seek His will for our lives.
Hello Debbie,
Where was my choice when I was a newborn baby crying for my mother? It was clearly not the Lord’s Will that my mother and I be separated, it was the Church’s Will to punish her for premarital sex. Yes, I now have choices. I choose to let my voice be heard regarding this unjust practice for the benefit of selfish needs, not God.
I’m sorry, but I don’t agree with this line of thinking, though I DO think every child is a treasure. It’s just that it is to much to burden the adoptee with the happiness of the adoptive parents. It’s just not healthy. Certainly all children impact their parents’ happiness. I mean, as a mom my joy in life is naturally very wrapped up in my kids. But adoptees often carry this burden to a greater extent. It’s not a burden any of us were made to carry.
I struggled with infertility for two years before my daughter was born. She is an answer to prayer too – mine and my husband’s. Knowing this doesn’t make her feel burdened, but special and loved. Why should it be different for adoptees?
Hi Aurette. 🙂 When adoptees carry an unhealthy responsponsibility for their parents happiness, it can hamper their ability to explore their own emotions about adoption. It can significantly increase a sense of guilt for feeling loss, or impede the recognition of that loss altogether.
It can also cause the adopted child/adult to behave in “good” ways — they are THE SOURCE of their parenets’ joy, and in their minds maintaining that can become their “job”. This is not only unhealthy for the parent/child relationship, but can filter into other relationships as well. None of us can keep everyone happy all the time, yet adoptees have a disproportionate drive to do so.
Does that make any more sense?
I realize you are just trying to make the best out of the whole situation. I understand the point you are coming from. We are here to serve and not be served. That our life is meant for that service and every burden the we bear is a testament to our faith. I believe that. But sometimes I just want to know what it feels like not to have been relinquished? I had a great adoptive family too. But they are not really me and I am not really them, you know? Sometimes I just want to know what it feels like to look at someone who looks like me and acts like me. I wonder if she thinks about me. If he knows about me. You know. Do I have other siblings and are they like me? What is my heritage? Where si my blood come from? So many adoptive families have their own information about their ancestry. Like we should just accept it as our own but it is not. Where did we come from?
Also, if you had had brown hair would you not still be you? But then would your adoptive parents not have wanted you? If my aparents had known I would be so dark complected would they have still taken me home?
I think sometimes that we are a commodity. We were a supply for a demand. It was never about us but about them thinking they were unable to concieve.
I grew up with this train of thought, verbatim. This way of thinking gave everyone the warm fuzzies, especially my parents who I always wanted to please. All of society spoon fed this “gift from god” stuff and I clung to it for dear life.
After having a child and learning who I am and where I came from, it is easy to see this train of thought for what it is, a beautifully wrapped piece of poop.
Yes, this is beautiful. I suggest that you, too, have a few babies and give them as gifts. There is no greater love.
yeah, i remember believing that sort of stuff too
but when you stop, really stop, in the quiet of the night, and still all the other thougths
you may wonder why?
why would God put a baby in the wrong belly?
why would He allow one woman to conceive and carry a healthy child for 9 months, lose that child, and then live the rest of her life emotionally (and maybe even spiritually) crippled?
Why would he do that to a baby – this new life that He breathed into being? why would he cause that baby to grow and bond with its mother for 9 months and then rip the baby from all it’s ever known?
what if? what if God allowed a woman to conceive so that He could prove His love to her? to show to that new mom that His promises are for real, that He never will Leave Her or Forsake Her as she parented this new baby, even though times would be tough. what if God wanted to provide miracles for this new family?
what if God wanted this child to grow up in her original mommas arms and wanted HIS church to support this new family and show them what compassion looked like? the kind of compassion that gives without expecting to receive something in return?
what about the original mommas prayers?
when she cried in the middle of the night very afraid – what if she prayed and begged God to make a way so she could keep her baby? I imagine that she didn’t care what color her baby’s eyes and hair were…
Can a mother forget her baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
what if that mother is praying that she someday find the daughter she had borne
Amen friend. (I think you know who i am, right? 🙂 )
wow. don’t want to be around when the fog lifts.
Wow. I guess god really hated me then, considering the people he “gifted” me to. Or maybe they were just ungrateful, huh?
I’m glad you’re so happy about your adoption, I really am, but consider the fact that, often, adoptions are not so happy and can, in fact, cause a lot of heartbreak on all sides. As an adoptee, it’s important to add your voice to making sure the system works for EVERYONE. Please take the time to do some research and learn all the facts. We really need ALL adoptee voices, especially the ones that grew up in good families. It’s all too easy for people to dismiss us “other type” as just bitter.
Aurette,
What an awesome picture for this post…PERFECT! Thank you so much for your comments today and for these beautiful words in this post! It warms our hearts to read this, especially coming from someone who was adopted. Have a wonderful weekend!
-Ron and Barbara