God’s Full of Surprises
Two years ago we were praying about our future children and the Lord began to stir our hearts. Some people call it a “holy discontent.” As we pressed into Him in His Word, He began to break our hearts for things that break His — particularly orphans. Talk about a timeout moment. “God, are you saying what we think you are saying? That you want us to adopt?” At the time, the word adoption was a foreign concept to us and quite frankly a scary one. However, we desired to know what the Lord was saying and we wanted to be on the same page, together.
We prayed for months about adoption, while fears and questions swarmed our minds. “Does this mean God is sweetly telling us we will be unable to conceive children?” “Should we attempt biological children first?” My husband even stated that “selfishly he desired to have at least one biological child first.” But he pressed through that desire and constantly called to the Lord, “Tell me Your will and I will submit to it.” After much discussion, we decided that neither of us would have the deciding factor in our future. The Lord would decide for us. So we prayed daily, fasted often, asking one simple question: “God, do you want us to adopt?”
Three months later, the Lord answered us simultaneously with the loudest “yes” we could possibly hear. At the same time, He was specific and told us we would adopt a little boy from Africa.
Africa, really? God don’t you realize that we live in the South? How will that affect us? Could we not just adopt a child who looks like us because that would be easier? Although people here like to say that racism is a thing of the past — try to bring a “black” child into your family and see how people respond. But God told us he knows where we live, he knows all about us — more than we ever will. And he chose a child for us, one who may not look like us, but he’s ours.
Two days after God gave us our answer to adopt, we saw two pink lines on a pregnancy test. “What?!” We felt like Solomon. God, who knows our hearts, granted us not only the thing we asked for, but also the thing we did not! He is a gracious God.
Throughout our pregnancy and first six months of our son’s life — we had lots of time to pray. God has molded and shaped our hearts. We are constantly being changed by Him. We are not the people we once were. He is teaching us the power of prayer, to love like He loves and the hardest but best part — to sacrifice. The fears and questions we had do not reign in our minds anymore. We are so in love with the Lord that we don’t care what others think. We love our God and we love our son. He will have beautiful brown skin and curly hair, and he will live right here in Mississippi with us!
We didn’t get there overnight. We are thankful that God has called us to step out in faith. We pray we are outliving our lives. When our journey began we did not know anyone who was adopting. We had no clue what it would look like. Through Outlive Your Life we have met other families who are also answering the call to adopt and we are encouraged that our church supports adoptive families. We recently began the home study process and revealed our adoption plans to our families. The responses varied. Some of our loved ones are very supportive — others are not. This road is hard. This road is emotional. But, we can honestly say we rejoice in this hardship because we have never been closer to the Lord than we are now!
By Lee and Abby Blackburn, Pinelake Reservoir