Sanctification through adoption

It has been awhile since I posted  an update to the blog on where we are in the process. For those of you following our story, I wanted to inform you that we are still in the wait; however, I'd like to be transparent for a minute and share what The Lord is doing while we wait!

For several months now, we have been receiving "situations" about potential birth mothers and baby that she is carrying. We receive these notifications by email from our consultant and the agencies that we are working with. These emails are very hard to read through as we learn the stories of these mothers and what brought them to the road of adoption. We then have to decide if we want to be a potential family for these birth mothers. Once we decide "yes", our family information book is given to them (along with several other families) for them to choose who best fits their desires. This ongoing process has been quite the learning experience for Phillip and I as God is revealing to us how He is sanctifying us on this journey.

I was telling a dear friend the other day how funny it is that we, as Christians, often ask God to make us more like Jesus, to work in us and change us to who He created us to be. Often times when those requests are answered, we find ourselves not liking the change...saying things like "this is too hard", "I don't want to go through this", "why can't my circumstances be different?", "why are you bringing me through this Lord?" - or am I the only one who does this? God is so merciful to us. Even when we doubt his goodness and when we can't see what He is doing, He continues to show us grace and reveal to us that He is ever present by teaching and changing the way we think. It has become so evident to us how much we like comfort. Comfort is familiar. Comfort is easy. Adoption is NOT comfortable. Truly following Christ is NOT comfortable! Oh, how we are learning what this means. We say we trust The Lord to bring this child into our lives, yet, we were finding ourselves looking for the comfortable situations...the easy ones where the mother's are perfect and living the way we think they should. We struggled with whether or not we were using wisdom in our decision making or lack of genuine trust in The Lord's providence. As we kept seeing so many situations that were "uncomfortable" and not considering them, we started to feel the conviction of The Spirit and ask ourselves "Is this right?", "Is this the point of adoption?" If we truly believe adoption to be a tangible example of the gospel, then our thought process must change. The gospel is not comfortable. God did not wait for us to be perfect before bringing us into His family. The gospel is redemption- loving the undesirable to the point of death. Adoption is redemption-buying back a life and quite possibly changing the life of a mother-this is the point and purpose of adoption- to reflect the gospel.

 We have been stewing over these truths lately. The Lord is graciously changing our thought process. We are being sanctified more and more as we continue through the adoption process. The Lord is causing us to depend entirely on Him. We have not been chosen for the easy situations. We are learning that maybe there is a reason for that! We have come to the place of resting in the Sovereignty of God which allows us to be more open to the uncomfortable situations. Sure, the birth mother who has been using Heroin throughout her pregnancy; the mother who doesn't know the birth father; or, the mother who has a mental health disorder that could be passed on to the baby are all fearful situations-they are not comfortable; however, we have been reminded that our King is still on the thrown! He is in control of our adoption and will give us whatever baby He has created and designed to become a Merritt according to His will-no matter the circumstances. It is in this knowledge that the Lord is sanctifying us to himself for. our. good. Praise be to God!

I borrowed this photo from a friend (Kaleigh Perry) and have it as the wallpaper on my phone- what a great reminder that our God knows all things: past, present and future!

 So, we have come to understand that we will walk through this adoption process and all that it involves until we reflect Christ and be who we are called to be- and even then, when we reach the end result we will look to whatever The Lord leads us to next that will continue to sanctify us to Himself until Christ returns.