Why We Adopted

I've tried many times to work out how I would like to express myself in telling the story that led to my husband and I adopting a six year old boy this week. There are so many different angles I could take. I could tell about how the idea first came to us, or the journey of decision making that we took, and why we finally landed on 'Yes! Let's do it!'.

But I'm going to start with something my brother said to me many years ago. He was a youngster, just out of school and travelling quite a lot. He visited a country, I think it was Thailand, although I may be mistaken, where he had noticed that there were no beggars in the streets. The Buddhist monks there made their temples available for those in need to come and find food and shelter.

"I'll believe in God," my brother told me, "when I see Christians doing the same thing."

"How can I believe in the loving God you're telling me about when in this nation, so full of Christians, I see so little provision for the poor." It was a stalemate for our conversation of many years in which I had been hoping to introduce him to my Best Friend.

Years have passed, and we still have beggars on our streets. But God has not been silent on the matter. He has led Richard and me, as well as countless others, to do dangerous, risky, outrageous, and generous things that represent His heart for the poor, the vulnerable, the defenceless.

In the church that we are a part of, which I know stands in good company with fellow churches doing similar work, this year we have provided 775 000 meals to those in need. We have helped 998 children to read and write in English. We have provided assistance to the foreigners amongst us during the Xenophobic attacks. As a church we have not neglected to care for those amongst us. (For more highlights from the past year, see the Domino Foundation Blog.)

This year our church also opened up a second babies home, which is a transition home that cares for orphaned and abandoned children during their crisis period of awaiting families. Over the last ten years we have had around 110 children through the babies home. All of them have found families, barring one that passed away. We have been able to include two of them in our own family: Jada, to whom we added the name Grace, and Ntokozo, to whom we will add the name Samuel.

Neither Richard nor I have any illusion that we can save the whole world. Nor are we going to try. However, it makes sense, as my brother pointed out all those years ago, that if there is a God, and if His heart is good, then His followers would reflect His heart in some small way, each playing their part in the area God leads them.

And so our journey is this: We truly do love our God. We'd do anything for Him because He has already done everything for us. He is the perfect Father. His love for us is always unconditional, and where there is a penalty to be paid for our wrong, He pays it for us. He is the ultimate provider. Richard and I are of one heart when we choose to lay ourselves and our preferences down for the sake of representing Him as He would choose to be represented.

Too many people can rightly say of Christians, that our religion is superficial. It is Iip-service only. But God says, "Religion that our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after widows and orphans in their distress." (James 1:27)

And so, to my brother, the work is not done yet, I confess. But I hope that in our lives you can see the evidence not only of His existence, but also of His heart. Are we scared? Yes! Are we stretched? Yes! Is it easy? Of course not! We're just ordinary people! Sometimes I have loved Jada Grace and Samuel Ntokozo as a self-sacrificial choice, and sometimes I love them from the overflow of my heart, but always the love originates with the work of God in my heart, just like the courage comes from His encouragement.

My prayer is that you can see that God is at work, and that when He has access to our hearts, as Richard and I try to give Him increasingly each day, then despite our lives being wild, and full, and a little bit crazy, they also look a little bit more how you expected they might look if He was real.