My mom called me one afternoon and said, "The women's ministry is planning a luncheon in my backyard, and I was thinking you might be a good speaker for it. If you were to consider this, what would you be likely to talk about?" Or something like that.
"Funny you should ask," I basically said. "I've really been reflecting on our adoption journey and the spiritual lessons surrounding it. I've been thinking a lot about parenting, too, and trying to formulate some of the things I have discovered about our approach as parents to discipline, training our children, and relating to the world as a family."
"Well, why don't you pray about it and think on it and get back to me," she said.
So that's how it went. God was placing things on my heart, or at least prompting me to reflect on and find words for what's been banging around in my head, and he was guiding my mom to think of me as a potential speaker.
This is all very funny to me because I am very comfortable teaching many other things in many other circumstances, but when it comes to anything having to do with the Bible, I feel very ill-equipped. I feel like I don't really know what I think I know. I have no authority to speak on the Bible because I have not been trained in it, because most of what I know I learned a long time ago and have not studied recently with the intention of teaching.
A friend reminded me that it doesn't matter - I have the story of my life and how God has been a part of it. Biblical truth has been revealed in the details of my story. I am not attempting to speak for God, but rather to point to him through what he has done in my life. OK, I thought. I can do that.
For about six weeks, whenever I had spare time, I would read the stories of the barren women in the Bible, almost of of whom eventually bore children. All these stories were not about the healing of the women, but rather the glorification of God that came after the wait and the longing. Their stories, and mine, are not about how God made our lives better, but rather how we had the privilege of accompanying God in the work he was doing.
In my case, I am not mothering children who will one day be the lineage of Christ. But I am an answer to more than a few people's prayers for Benjamin and Sadie. (An imperfect and flawed answer, but a faithful one.) When all the strands of my little family are examined, there are some beautiful revelations indeed.
So I called this conversation "From Barrenness to Restoration." I have never given birth, but I became a mother. And I am getting to play a role in the healing of all the hearts involved - the birthparents, the biological families, in particular the grandparents, and eventually, to Benjamin and Sadie. It is my hope that through open adoption they will never imagine rejection or a lack of love, but if their teenage minds conjure up some angst about it, I have the privilege of helping them navigate out of that turmoil. I also have the privilege of giving them the space they could need with their biological families if that should help. My guess, however, is that with all this love and support my kiddos won't have a hole in their hearts.
One day I will post the text - or perhaps it will make a good feature for a magazine. I continue to think of things to adjust, emphasize, or delete, so I want to take the time to refine it. In the meantime, if you need a speaker on adoption, mothering, or parenting, you know how to reach me.