Brokenness

Every once in a while a sermon gets to brewing in my head, here's the latest one.  The cause of it and heart behind it will soon be posted, I just don't have enough emotional strength to do it yet.

I have been pondering some things lately. In our culture today we think we deserve things.  Maybe even if it’s thinking that good things are basic rights that we have.  It has seeped into our tiniest thoughts and pervaded even what seems like good things, such as: the perfect or any pregnancy, the perfect child with “ten fingers and ten toes”, a decent job, a happy home etc..  We go to great lengths to, not only obtain these things, but try and convince others that they too deserve these things, or that God wants these things for us and will give them to us if we have faith.  Some people will even tell you to claim these good things because that’s really what God wants for you.  Oh what a broken idea. 

In the beginning God created a perfect world. It was free from sickness, pain and death.  Everything lived in a perfect peace harmony and He created Adam and Eve to be the crowning jewel.  Adam and Eve walked with God in person and had perfect fellowship.  And then, in one simple bite of rebellion, that perfect creation was ripped and scarred.  That perfect relationship was now broken, and brokenness permeated everything.  Pain, work so hard it makes you sweat, death and sin are what we inherited from Adam, brokenness.  I think part of the beauty and blessing of being a barren woman is that I have felt that brokenness from so early on.  It is a blessing because; it makes me see my only Hope.

I have been asked a lot of questions about if “we’re ready” for our next adoption.  Do we know what we’re getting into, is this what you really want all because we’re open to becoming parents to a kid who needs a little extra help.  There is something that I realized a few years ago.  God created my body to not birth my children.  He had a different plan for me.  It was wrought in brokenness, but was HIS perfect plan.  Adoption was always God’s first and only plan for how we would become parents.  In brokenness we grieved infertility. But adoption was never a second plan, it was always God’s first plan and He built it into our hearts years before we even decided to start growing our family.

 

What we understand is that our family is wrought from brokenness, built in brokenness, parented in brokenness.  As parents our past is brokenness and our children’s past is filled with such brokenness that a heart can hardly bear it.  The path to becoming parents has been/will be filled with having to witness and be a part of the brokenness of, our families’ expectations, corrupt governments, a broken system that leaves children with no home who could have a home.  This brokenness leaves us and our children’s hearts a little scarred and maybe even physically scarred. BUT we understand that God NEVER promised us anything else. Not ANY of us.  

What did Jesus have to say about our time on this earth? “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace.  In the world you will have tribulation”John 16:33.  The promise God told to Adam and Eve of what their time left and that of their descendants would be like was, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” And “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” Gen 3:16-19 (sure doesn’t sound like we have a promise that everything should be happy-go-luck for us!)  Though we experience brokenness, there is that Hope that I mentioned.  The brokenness was always meant to reveal to us our need for a Savior. Though God told Adam and Eve what the ramifications were for rebelling and rejecting the perfect creation and fellowship He had created for His own pleasing, God also gave them this beautiful hope.  To the serpent God said “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head”Gen 3:15, and thus the first promise of redemption.  Though mankind rejected God’s fellowship, He, in his infinite goodness, gave Hope and said that “A REDEEMER will come to Zion” Isaiah 59:20 and that Redeemer came “to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts crying, “Abba! Father!” Gal 4:5-7.

Though we are very aware of the brokenness, the beauty of being a part of adoption is we get to see and take part in redemption!  To see a little girl laugh as her daddy delights in her when she had none before is a beautiful thing indeed.  Let us not fight or deny the brokenness or try to convince ourselves that it doesn’t pertain to us or our families.  That brokenness makes a way for redemption, and that is worth it all.  Our children may not have ten fingers and ten toes and they will definitely have some major emotional hurts.  Our entire family will have experienced grief to get to the point of being a family.  But, do not despise it or try to tell us that God wants different for us.  We get the beautiful blessing of seeing and taking part in redemption first hand.  We were never promised the blessings would be easy, or happiness, or a perfect anything.  We GET that.

The blessings we are promised: Matt 5:3-10

-The poor in spirit, blessed with the kingdom of heaven

-Those who mourn, blessed by being comforted

-The meek, blessed to inherit the earth

-Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed with being filled

-The merciful, blessed that they will be shown mercy

-The pure in heart, blessed for they will see God

-The peacemakers, blessed for they will be called sons of God

-Those who are persecuted because of righteousness, blessed for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

Let us encourage each other in these blessings and promises for these are the things that God actually wants for us.

-a