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Adopted for Eternity

Two Sundays ago I was having breakfast with my kids before church and Abby announced that she had figured something out.  In her most serious five year old voice, she told me she knew that I had stolen her from her real mother and made up all these stories about when she was a baby.  I almost spit my coffee out!   I am a huge fan of adoption and the picture it paints of God’s love towards all of us, but ya’ll, this kid ain’t adopted!  Pardon my south Georgia slang!  And child snatching??? I mean, what in the world are they showing on Dora these days?!   

So that was last week.  This Sunday my baby girl, who is totally two, insisted that she was not going to wear that cute dress with the turkey on it. Now she doesn’t have many outfits that haven’t been worn by at least three other people first, but this is one that I bought brand new for her (I am a sucker for a sale).  There was weeping and gnashing of teeth, but I was determined she was going to wear the stinkin turkey dress on turkey week!  I mean, turkey dresses are only cute one week out of the year for heaven’s sake!

About the time we have almost gotten used to Eliana’s weeping and wailing as she walks around the downstairs mourning and declaring that the cute little turkey on her dress is food and she will eat it, Maddie Grace, my middle child who likes to keep life exciting, runs to Abby with the news that I have thrown her leaf art into the trash.  Like all mamas I try to save the special stuff, but there comes a point when the walls are covered over that I have to clean out.  I did it secretly of course, but count on a little to find it in the trash and rat me out!  Abby sobbed in a little ball on the ouch for a solid thirty minutes.  Besides that it hurt her feelings, I am sure it added to whatever case she has built in her mind that I have stolen her from her real mom.  All this before we leave for church at 9:15 in the morning.

Yesterday while I am folding laundry, I hear Abby’s voice floating up the stairs with a pretty advanced melody and words about how she just wants to know who she really is.  I am sorting socks and thinking the desire for a God-given identity, the need to know who you are, must be built in our DNA, when Alena, Abby’s twin,  appears in the laundry room door.  She asks me if Abby really came out of my tummy.  Seriously?!  “Is that what she is singing about?!” I ask incredulously.  Alena breaks into a smile as she nods, and we simultaneously burst into laughter.  At least someone gets the absurdity of this ongoing drama!


I guess I am going to have to break out some videos of these two little squirmy babies covered in goop and pulled fresh from my c-section incision in order to convince Abby she belongs to me.  As I sit here typing about all this silliness, I can’t help but be struck by the thought that maybe God deals with this same incredulity.  Perhaps when his children are not acting like his children or maybe when we are sitting in guilt from our choices or we are stumbling around wondering who we really are, He is in heaven spitting out his coffee.  Surprised that we still don’t get it.  Wondering if Jesus will have to appear to us as He did to Thomas and let us feel the scars in His hands before we believe that He came for us.  That he has conquered our sin and completely freed us from guilt.  That he has unlocked the door of our personal prisons, whatever they may be, and if we will just reach out our hand to take His and walk through The Door we can come squinting out of darkness and into such gloriously blinding freedom.  Freedom we can only have imagined.  No longer groping around in the darkness searching for a purpose but stepping fully into the destiny we were made for.  Realizing that He has robed us with His righteousness and that when we are found in Jesus this is what God the Father sees when He looks at us- His children, created to do great works that He prepared for us before the foundation of the world.  God is not boring.  No, in fact he invented this thing called adventure and excitement and joy.    There is no substitute for finding out you truly belong to a Daddy who loves you, created you, will never abandon you, and made you for a destiny beyond what you could ever ask or imagine.  One that extends beyond the fragility of this dusty earth into eternity.  I am thankful this week that the God of the Universe has gone to such great lengths to reach us, bring us into His family, and convince us of who we really are... a treasure He thought was worth pursuing at every cost.  May we put aside our misgivings and Believe!


John 10:9-10
I am the door.  If anyone enters by Me he will be saved... The thief comes to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.  I have come that they may have life, and  have it more abundantly. (-Jesus)

Galations 5:1  It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. 

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