May 20, 2010 | Mama Smith

moving forward

It’s been a pretty wild ride for our family this year. Some public loss – such as losing our baby at 9 weeks – and some more private. But through it all, it has been the year of learning to not just keep wading through hit after hit, but fighting to get to that waterfall of Christ’s love for us over and over and over. We’ll never get filled up this side of heaven. And we’ll become fairly dry, cracked and bleeding if we don’t keep standing under those roaring waters.

The past few months have involved mourning, praying, asking, laughing and just enjoying the ever sweetening depth Jesus is taking our little family to.

My own heart has been all over the map. Wondering what being a family looks like. What the call Jesus has given me to mother looks like. What I do with the pain in my heart over losing a child. How I reconcile that with our ever-growing desire to adopt. The wrestling has not been easy. My heart, for a good long while, has felt torn. But we asked, and He answered. He reignited the call on Matthew’s heart and then fiercely set the fire on my own, to once again begin the process of adoption.

I can’t begin to say I understand why God brought a baby into our lives in December only to take them away early February. Right in the middle of our adoption process. The confusion and stirring that brought into my heart was dizzying. And so we’ve waited. Wanting time to heal and time to be led by Christ instead of jumping into the next thing.

Yet one invaluable thing stands out through that experience, the mark we now wear as a family. Finding ourselves face to face with the cruel terrifying monster of loss, battling that beast and surviving, but not coming out unscathed. We are a family that now joins thousands of other families that bear the mark of loss.

That very viscerally includes the hundreds of thousands of birth mothers all over the world. Who, whether circumstantially or by choice, will forever bear the mark of losing a child. Whether their hearts are alive to feel that tearing or whether life has left them too deadened to experience that level of pain, they are losing a child. They did carry that child for 9 months to say goodbye. And no matter what the argument is in that specific situation, the mark of loss is inflicted on that woman’s heart for their lifetime, another tragic result of the fall.

No, Jesus did not bring a baby into our lives for 2 short months to “teach us a lesson”. But through the pain, this is a golden thread that I praise him for. That He is now taking our family into this process of adoption as a different family. That we do not entered it to blindly gain another child. That there is mourning to be faced. For the birth mother. For the child some day. For yet another example that this is not how life was intended to be. But there is simultaneously great, great beauty…more stunning than I had previously seen.

That I myself was birthed into a fallen world. That in my terrified, beastly state, I had an adoring Father who scooped me up and declared me beautiful and captivating to his heart. Who gave up the life of his very own son to claim me as His eternally.

As a family, we long to view ourselves less and less in this life as Jesus’ “legally adopted kids” and begin to see ourselves through the true gospel lens of just being his kids, all legalities aside. We don’t really get that yet. We want to, but we’re so tempted in this life to still feel orphaned. Like we’re sort of wanted, sort of annoying at times. Not that we’re worthy of having anyone actually DIE for us. But He did. And so we want to…for all our children. However they are “birthed” into our life. We want a kingdom perspective. About family. About children. About our “full rights as sons” Gal.4:5.

So if you do anything, PRAY FOR US! For God to keep working on our hearts so resistant to his love, for the woman who is carrying our child and the decisions she is facing, for minismith #3, for the finances necessary in this very fallen system, and for joy as we walk through this exciting and labor-intensive process.

Many of you have asked, so on a logistical note: we are pursuing domestic adoption of a trans-racial child. This is a story I will write about soon and how He brought us to this decision. Briefly, the statistics are staggering. The costs to adopt a Caucasian baby are double, DOUBLE, the cost of adopting an African American child. Not looking at the money, but what lies behind that fact, there is something terribly sad and consumeristic about that reality.

A book that has been hugely influential for us, that we’re going to “demand” (ha, ha…only mildly so) that our family and close friends, who’ll be in this child’s life, read is “Adopted for Life” by Russell D. Moore.