tapestry

In our adoption journey, one of the turning points for us was when we heard a speaker at our church in Claremont pray during a worship/prayer time one evening. At that time, we had only just started toying with the idea of adopting our third child, but we had nothing concrete, only talk.

That evening, Jennifer Kennedy Dean said a prayer that resonated with K and I, separately. She couldn't have known that we at that point wanting to grow our family. She couldn't have known that we had mentioned adoption in passing. But her prayer, and the words that she said... For K and I, it opened our eyes to the fact that God had planned for us to have this child, even if he grew inside of someone else.

Those words resonated with each of us so deeply. Those words were the words God wanted us to hear.

A short while after that, we decided that we would adopt.

Fast forward to this week.

We received a present in the mail a few days ago to celebrate Noah joining our family. (Thank you, Debbie!) It was a book by Jennifer Kennedy Dean called Legacy of Prayer: A Spiritual Trust Fund for the Generations. It's an easy read, filled with lots of great ideas about praying for our children.

But this is what stood out for me. This is what was new for me.

In the book, Jennifer shares that thirty years ago, when she was 19, single and in college, she found out she was pregnant. She writes, I knew instantly what God was telling me to do, and never once have I second-guessed it. He wanted to me to place the child for adoption.

After she hands her baby over to his adoptive parents, she calls him, Child of my womb, child of their hearts. The answer to their prayers lay in their arms, and strangely, also the answer to my mother's prayers for me. My wounds tell a resurrection story.

All those years ago, Jennifer made what was probably one of the hardest decisions in her life. I can only imagine how heartwrenching it must be to give up a child for adoption. I can only imagine how much Noah's biological mother loved him, that she would do what she thought was best for his life.

I am convinced that Jennifer's experience gave her the words for K and I to hear that night in Claremont. What we would think of as a mistake gave Jennifer the experience to have the words to say that would change my family.

God takes all our mistakes, our bad choices, our poor decisions and weaves it into a beautiful tapestry. We cannot see it all, and this side of heaven, we may never see it all. But at the end of the day, his tapestry is beautiful. Always.