Ministering by Adoption

Ministering by Adoption

What comes to mind when you hear the word Ministering? I think of Mother Teresa helping orphans in Calcutta. I was fortunate to do a report on her in 6th grade, and while I cannot remember all the details of Mother Teresa’s life, I do remember that studying the way she helped mankind is something that changed me. I was only 11 when I did that report, and now I’m 34. It’s been more than 2 decades.

In my life I have been called to adoption. Called because my heart had dreamed about it for years. Called because my spouse was also open to it and had his own experiences to lead him to this path. Called because once we decided, we felt God in the details guiding our way and supporting us at every turn. Called because negative comments or projected fears others expressed to us could not match our internal understanding that “come what may”, it was our time to do this in our family NOW.

When our adoption placement came 2 years ago, it blindsided us. Months of researching, preparation, and training could not equal the magnitude of the crisis our children were in from their short lives filled with too much trauma—they’d suffered more grief and loss than most adults I know have ever had to bear (and my soon to be kids were only 3 and 4 years old at the time).

Everything marketed about adoption and often displayed in movies is pretty glamorous because the adoption itself is basically portrayed as a cure-all, or the end of the struggles. Adoption gets painted as the “happily ever after” resolution to the difficult path a child was on. But the truth is that adoption is just the beginning of a long road for healing and wholeness. For some, the holes left in a child’s heart and mind are never repairable even with a loving adoptive family who gives everything they have to try to fix it. 

I remember when the ministering program came out at church. I tried to express at church that I was physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted from ministering. Some tried to explain to me that it’s not supposed to be that way. But there’s no other way for an adoptive parent raising kids with special needs to truly feel (especially in the throes of a schedule laden with doctor appointments and endless therapies) while ministering to their children, and especially when the world at large does not understand the burden or what it feels like day in and day out. 

I believe that you can come to know what it is like to minister without being an adoptive parent, but becoming an adoptive parent is like a complete immersion in the concept—a way to drink what “ministering” means from a fire hose, a baptism by fire in every way within yourself that you never knew was possible (and we’re not talking a one day fire, we’re talking a lengthy fiery furnace) because there is no other way to pull your adopted children out of the hell that they had been living in. When you adopt, your job is to walk through the hell with them and everyone in your immediate family is asked to do it, too.

Ministering by adoption will change YOU. Instead of “saving” the child, it might actually save YOU. You will not be the same person you were before the journey—but how could you be? Why would you want to be? 

Beware—it could consume you for a season (maybe long, maybe short) where your ONLY priority will HAVE to be your immediate family alone until you can function enough to reach out beyond your adoptive family. But that’s okay—it has to be okay. That’s just how it is when you “leave the ninety and nine” to help “the one”. Also beware—your heart may be as big as the desire to bring in all the orphans you meet, but your physical and mental capacity may not allow you to help more than a “small” number. It’s not about the number, it’s about the call to extend love to the one in a way that sometimes no one else but you can do, maybe in a way no one else has chosen to do, and in the way the Lord trusts you to do when you have felt the call to adopt.

Every time I hear talks on how to minister and see church efforts on how to show and teach people what it means I usually think to myself that more lives touched by adoption would produce the desired outcome of the ministering mission in no time. And truth is, kids all over the world and in our communities are waiting to be ministered to as we speak.