For the Love

If you've guys been around here very long, you've heard me talk about how Hard the adoption journey is.

There are so many tools we have to carry around with us -all the time- as adoptive parents...ready to whip them out at a moment's notice.

Tools for healing and helping our kiddos navigate feelings.

Tools for diffusing situations.

Tools for building attachment.

Tools for food issues, sleep issues, ownership issues...

The list goes on and on and on....

My friends in the adoption-world often joke about kidnapping taking Dr. Purvis home with us from one of her conferences so she can just do it for us... She's really good, ya'll. {and it's exhausting.}

But while all of those tools are needed and incredibly useful in helping bring our children healing.

They are no substitute for Love.

"There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear" 1 John 4:18(a)

Now, I don't claim to have perfect love. I get annoyed and frustrated  and angry. And I yell more than I mean to and apologize more than I wish I had to.

But...there are times when I can see how my love for Marvel is the vessel God is using to blanket him in perfect Perfect Love.

We took a lot of pictures of Marvel sleeping when he got home. Partly because we were doting first-time parents who took pictures of every remotely cute thing he did (in-turn, we created a monster, ha!)

But partly? because sleep did not come easy for our sweet Marvel. It was a time of vulnerabilty and an opportunity for fear to come roaring out. Awake and asleep.  It was here when fear was its strongest that I saw the power of Love.

Many nights, in the early season of Marvel sleeping in our room, he would wake up overwhelmed with fear and I would reach down and rub his back or hold his hand. As he gripped my hand in his and slowly drifted back into desperately-needed rest, I saw that Love. Perfect Love that only our Heavenly Father can pour out. Was more powerful than even the deepest, most rooted fears.

"Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins." 1 Peter 4:8

You see...Love doesn't erase the sins. It doesn't get rid of the hard stuff or make any of those things disappear, the way we might want it to.

But. It does release us from the power those things have over us. Deep Love, Perfect Love. brings us the strength we need to walk through the hard things without being overtaken by them.

It covers us. It empowers us. It heals us.

Today I am linking up over at:

The Hard.

Today I am linking up with my friend, Tiffany! Go check out all the other beautiful posts on adoption, foster, and orphan care!!

First, I should warn you that I just returned from Created for Care and I am processing a Lot of stuff these days... That said, proceed at your own risk ;-)

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Adoption is a picture of redemption. True.

And adoption puts children into forever families. True.

And for us, as the adoptive parents, I think the picture of the journey to our children is often filled with waiting, pursuit, longing, waiting, paperwork, waiting lists, more paperwork and more waiting.

All True.

And there comes a point when, after all that anguish, we are able to put the journey behind us and declare it all worth it in the end.  True.


But there is more to the story. There is so much more to the process and to the journey than our "yes".

There is hard, too.

Because while we were journeying and paperchasing and waiting and waiting and waiting?

Our children were walking through rejection, abandonment, shame, loss, hurt, longing, relinquishment, lonliness, abuse, trauma, neglect, malnourishment, sadness and grief.

Yes. Adoption is restoration and it is redemptive and it can bring beauty to brokenness.

But. BUT. It is also hurt. and loss. and more loss.....


It can be too easy, in my experience, to see the finish line and declare ourselves victorious without considering the hidden things. the broken things. the layers upon layers of hurt that we must carefully help our children peel back to bring true and complete healing.

We must be willing to walk through the hard, too, parents.  We must be willing to acknowledge that those early hurts deeply affected our children. And we must be ready to grieve with them. To talk about the hard things. To be honest and trustworthy with our childrens stories. To love them through the anger--which will undoubtedly be directed at us-- and to sit and wait as our children examine deeper and deeper inside their protected little hearts for the things they most want to be rid of....

We must understand that that finish line we celebrated? Was the starting line. We had simply arrived at the race.

And intentionally. purposefully. honestly. We must walk through the hard stuff with our children. We must cover shame with His grace and love. We must acknowledge unfairness and grieve hurts and losses and unanswered questions. We must be fully present. constant. never failing in our love and consistency.

Gently. 

Never forgetting that for us to be their forever family...

they have to have lost their first family.

"Adoptive parents and families are not always aware of how being relinquished has deeply impacted their adopted child. They are just so thankful to have that child in their life. But, all the while adoptive parents are rejoicing and celebrating, their adopted child is grieving the missing parts of his or her life before living with their family. Their adopted child has lost a part of his or her history, his or her DNA, his or her life –- and no one is available to talk about it." 

-Carissa Woodwyk