Three men. Three different life stories. One beautiful picture of adoption.
Their story is my story.
Eight years ago, when I got married, adoption became very personal to me. My husband was adopted. When asked about his story, his answer is simple and always the same: “My parents ARE my parents. That’s who God gave me. I’m thankful they gave me a chance to have a better life.”
My husband’s gratefulness and confidence are not born out of a family tree but a secure identity in Christ. He ultimately knows “whose” he is — God’s child. Instead of questioning why he was adopted, he simply trusts that God planned it.
Adoption touched my marriage. My relationship with my husband has caused me to consider how grateful I should be for my salvation through Jesus. My life is better because of His selfless sacrifice.
After five years of marriage, God called my husband and me to adopt a child, and adoption became even more personal to me.
Waiting for our son was difficult. My husband and I felt as if we were out of control. Through the process, we learned how to depend totally on God. Believing nothing was beyond His reach, we petitioned God to bring us a child.
Prayer was how our son came to us. I prayed specifically that God would give him a teachable spirit all the days of his life. My secret prayer was heard. In time, He would reveal that to me in a heartfelt way.
After our son was born, he was lovingly placed in a foster grandmother’s home for a time. She gave him a life Scripture, Isaiah 28:26. It says, “His God correctly instructs and teaches him.” Not knowing what I had prayed for him, God led her to this specific Scripture.
On adoption day, when I opened the calendar on which she had logged every detail of his new life, I saw the life Scripture. My heart rejoiced immediately. God personally showed me through His Word how He had been present with my son until I could hold him in my arms.
When I met my son, I fell in love. No blood relation. No physical features to be claimed. No proud “roots” of which to boast. Only love. God enlarged my heart to love another woman’s child and call him my own.
As each year passes, people constantly comment how my son favors me or my husband. I treasure those remarks but what I desire most is not that my son would grow to look more like me — I am sinful — but that he would grow to look more like Jesus.
Receiving the gift of my son gave me a purer understanding of grace than ever before. I didn’t deserve such a magnificent bundle of joy. God gave him to me out of His grace and love.
I thought God’s lesson had run its course, but I soon realized He would reveal more.
Adoption touched my life yet again. This time, it was in my relationship with my father.
This past summer, my father shared unexpected news. He said if my son ever questioned his adoption, then “tell him Papaw was adopted, too.”
“OK,” I said. “What do you mean?”
“I’m adopted,” he said. “Your grandmother is not your biological grandmother. She adopted me.”
Then it hit me. Adoption had touched my entire life and I had never known it. My grandmother adopted my father during her marriage to my biological grandfather. Later they divorced and my father would see her periodically. After remarrying, she moved to another state. There was little contact for a few years except through cards and letters. When my father was a young adult, they re-established their relationship. All my life, his mother has been my grandmother. She IS my grandmother.
Although I was unshaken by my father’s news, I realized I had always thought adoption was a good thing for other people. I didn’t know it had shaped my entire life. Three women’s selfless sacrifices changed my life for the better. Loving these three men has caused me to see God’s perfect plan for adoption. It is not man’s idea but heaven’s reality. It is not offensive but glorious.
Ephesians 1:4–5 says, “In love, He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will.”
God’s purpose and plan for the believer IS adoption. It’s how we enter into a relationship with God the Father. Christ’s selfless action born out of love on the cross brings us a new name, a new hope and eternal life.
My story is that I knew I was adopted through Christ but didn’t see the beauty of it. But as my father shared his story with me, I saw one beautiful picture of Christ emerging.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Ashley Anderton is a member of Hunter Street Baptist Church, Hoover.
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