Our youngest daughter turns 14 today. We have been in love with her for 13 years and 2 months. It is hard to believe. Our adoption journey to Russia seems like it happened moments ago, and yet so much has happened.
When we held Mary Moore for the first time, she was an 8 and ½ lb. 10 month old. She had vacant eyes, scaly skin, and she barely moved. Her diminutive size and lack of interaction was frightening. When she began connecting to the new world around her, she hated it. You wouldn’t believe the volume and pitch that could come out of something so tiny. Our greatest emotion toward M2 was love. We wanted to shower her with it; we wanted to hold her and rock her and sing to her. We wanted to feed her, stroll her around and play with her. She was confused and scared; everything in her world had changed and she was slow to acclimate. She was 100% ours but she didn’t feel like it.
When we traveled to Russia in 2001, we adopted M2 in a Moscow courtroom 2 days before we met her. Our child was over 2,000 miles away in a Siberian baby house. Before we met her, she was ours. When the gavel came down in that Moscow courtroom, the adoption was complete; nothing could change her status or security as a Nelson. There wasn’t an ounce in M2’s body that felt like a Nelson at that point.
Over the last 13 years Mary Moore has come into herself. The loving touch she shunned in her early days is now something she craves and quickly extends to others. She is outgoing and funny. She loves to eat all the things the rest of our family loves. She loves fashion and gymnastics. She has a southern accent and just like her siblings, she needs to be encouraged to clean her room and do her homework. She is as much a Nelson as any of her siblings were at 14. She isn’t through learning. There are adult Nelson lessons and opportunities that will come in the future. There will be more responsibilities and privileges that she will embrace when the time is right, and at that time she will understand even better what it means to be a Nelson. She was adopted in November of 2001, but she continues to grow in her understanding and “adoptedness” as she spends time with Nelsons. She was adopted; she is being adopted and she will be more adopted in the future. Her adoption was 100% and sure at the bang of the gavel, but adoption is also a process that she continues to grow in.
The experience of living through adoption has given me a sweet picture of understanding my own adoption and salvation. When I asked Jesus into my heart, my salvation was complete. I was 100% saved and my security in that salvation was sure. In the years since then, I have continued to be saved. I was saved; I am being saved, and I will be totally saved when Jesus returns or calls me home. Although my salvation was sure in an instant, there have been many moments, days and seasons that I haven’t acted much like a child of God. The more time I spend learning about my Heavenly Father and the more time I spend talking with Him, and searching for ways to obey Him, the more I understand and appreciate what it means to be a member of His family. I am being conformed into the likeness of my brother, Jesus. I am growing in my love for my Abba, Father. The experiences and learning opportunities that happen every day are God’s tender way of molding me. I am learning and reflecting more of what it means to belong to this heavenly family. There continue to be so many things I do that wound and hurt my Father and I feel like I don’t belong in this family, but these times are beautiful testimonies that reflect the Father’s love for a disobedient child. When I sin, He doesn’t kick me out of the family. He doesn’t turn His back on me or mock or deride me. He is even more gracious than we are as parents when our kids screw up. He forgives me, sets me back upright, and embraces me with His strong daddy arms. One day soon, I will be saved from everything that hinders me from being like Jesus. When I am with Jesus, I will be like Him, and when that day comes, I will completely understand and be able to sing about the incredible beauty of adoption. I was saved; I am being saved, and I will be saved. AMEN!
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.” Ephesians 1:3-6 (NKJV)
“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” Romans 8:14-16 (NKJV)