God, Infertility, and Adoption

I opened up my email today, only to find an awesome article in Christianity Today, regarding adoption and the struggles of IF.
Here it is:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/tc/2008/001/12.34.html
The Adoption Option
My search for answers to our struggle with infertility led to some surprising revelations about God's plan—especially how infertility and adoption played key roles in Bible history.
By Elliott J. Anderson
I'm a guy who likes answers. I want them now, and I want them fast.
I don't know if some personalities are better suited to dealing with infertility than others, but I do know mine isn't one of them! I'm hyper. Driven. I'm impatient and I'm competitive. Infertility is a masterful opponent, however, and as our time spent trying to conceive a child approached a decade, it was beating me physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Something had to change. I hate losing.
My wife, Angie, and I had discussed the idea of adoption for years, both prior to and right after our marriage. But now, when adoption seemed our only recourse, we made the subject off limits. It felt like an act of surrender rather than a choice. Like a consolation prize. Like second place.
As we balanced the delicate walk between grief and hope, I decided that I had to understand the Lord's heart regarding this subject. What did the Bible really teach us about infertility and adoption? How did God use it in the lives of His people? How was He using it in mine?
Sympathizing with AbrahamJacob has always been my favorite Bible hero, so I knew where to start this process. I did some intensive research on the first three generations of Abraham to see how God had knit together barren couples with His call of the chosen people. This study softened my heart. It helped me grieve at a deeper level and prepared me for an amazing journey that was soon to be unveiled.
I sympathized with Abram and the way his confusion grew each time the Lord told him that he would be the father of a multitude of nations. He was to be fruitful beyond comprehension, and yet Sarai just did not conceive. As each month passed without pregnancy, they must have assumed that God was displeased with them, or at best was waiting for them to be worthy of His call. I empathized; Angie and I had battled this same insecurity and conditional reasoning.
After 10 additional years of waiting, complete with a name change for each spouse and a turn-of-the-century birthday for Abraham, then and only then did the Lord fulfill His commitment to this now elderly couple. Isn't it typical of God to wait until He, and He alone, can bring the result? That's the overriding message I received from Abraham and Sarah. And, except for the age differences, a somewhat similar occurrence played out in my own marriage as the Lord brought us four children in the next two years.
Growing patience and trustThe second couple was Abraham's only son, Isaac, and his wife, Rebekah. We know that the covenant promise to Abraham was in jeopardy if Isaac and Rebekah remained barren.
Can you imagine how they felt? The pressure to carry on the covenant of God must have been overwhelming. They probably stayed away from relatives and community functions for years. I can just hear Isaac's friends telling him to leave the field for a couple of weeks and go hunt some game. Or suggesting he just needed to loosen the cloth around his loins for a while. And I can imagine Rebekah's friends telling her to stop worrying so much and to make sure that she tried all the latest conception strategies and positions.
The Bible doesn't give us much detail about their 20-year wait, but we do know that Isaac petitioned God (prayed with urgency) on behalf of Rebekah, and the prayer was eventually answered with the birth of twins, Esau and Jacob. From this story I saw an example of patience and trust that God's ways are the best ways, no matter what. Again, this patriarchal narrative played out in an eerily similar manner in our own story as Angie and I started our family by adopting twin boys, one of which (the younger, of course) we named Jacob.
Accepting the joyThe third couple I studied was Jacob and Rachel. Jacob was blessed with ten sons by his first wife, Leah, and two of the maids, but because Rachel was barren, the couple was neither content nor blessed. And the entire family system was in chaos because of their pain and obsession. Although Rachel did finally get her own sons, the second one cost her everything. She died during Benjamin's birth.
The Lord used the narrative of Jacob, my favorite hero, to challenge my perspective. Would I be so consumed with the desire for a biological child that anything short of our own conception would bring depression and despondency? Would my lack of contentment destroy the gifts of joy and encouragement that He had blessed me with, but which I was starting to withhold and deny?
Unbelievably, after the adoption of our twins, Angie became pregnant for the first time. But the celebration turned into fear and anxiety as Angie became very sick in the third trimester. Pre-eclampsia ravaged her body. Her kidneys started to shut down and her blood pressure soared. At her seven-month check-up she was admitted to the hospital so she could receive around-the-clock care. As we waited for the drugs to prepare both Angie and our baby for a premature birth, Angie's body gave out. One early morning she suffered three quick and progressive hemorrhages as her placenta ripped from the uterine wall.
An emergency C-section brought Alivia into the world with only four minutes to spare before a lack of blood flow would have resulted in long-term brain damage for our baby. Moreover, Angie fully recovered with no additional side effects other than extreme exhaustion. Though we had not planned the pregnancy, I too almost lost my "Rachel" for the child I'd so longed for.
In each of these stories, including our own, the couples eventually celebrated a natural childbirth. Still, I don't think it was the physical element of pregnancy that brought them the most joy. I know it wasn't for us.
When we decided to adopt the boys, Angie and I had already come to terms with our deepest desire. It wasn't biological heirs or blood and gene transference. It was the opportunity to parent, the privilege to raise up a boy or a girl in the ways of the Lord—to share life and dreams with the next generation.
Lessons on deliveranceSo, how does adoption fit into these revelations? With or without a natural childbirth, I was still a changed man. The journey through infertility to adoption had taught me some lessons about answers and deliverance that I think are significant for all families (with or without children, with or without infertility, and with or without adoption).
For one thing, the word choice is important. The Lord chose Israel as His people, His nation. The Lord chose Abraham and Sarah as the initial couple for this covenant; He chose a barren couple as a way to exemplify His power and grace. And then He chose infertility as a major factor in each succeeding generation's spiritual development as He built their dependence and trust in Him and Him alone.
If we believe in God's sovereignty and grace, then we must believe in His timing and His will. We must be able to rest and abide in it. And I think the next couple of generations in the nation of Israel—the chosen people—reveal that need even more intimately.
About 150 years after that original adoption of Abraham and his descendants, the Lord moved His chosen people into slavery. Wow, what a privilege to be chosen by God! Jacob and his family moved to Egypt during the great famine, and that eventually cost them their freedom. The Israelite slavery lasted 430 years.
Isn't that often what infertility feels like? Like a life of slavery to a goal or a land that we can't inhabit on our own? This is why I believe that every couple wrestling with infertility is also wrestling with adoption, even if they don't realize or recognize its influence.
Enter the era of great deliverance. Enter Moses, the chosen leader of the original freedom march. Moses—the adopted son of the enemy king. The Pharaoh of Egypt? What was God thinking? How could He choose to lead His chosen people out of slavery through the deliverance of an adopted Egyptian boy?
Even so, an adopted man led an adopted nation out of slavery and into freedom. Though we may not have recognized that connection before, think of its importance for non-Jewish believers. For the Gentiles. For most of the Christians in the world.
Doesn't, after all, the Davidic line come through another "adopted" figure? Ruth became a God-fearing, God-loving "adopted" Israelite by committing her life to Naomi and the Lord: "Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay; Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried" (Ruth 1:16-17). How beautiful. How romantic. What a symbol for all families, regardless of make-up, origin, or heritage. The Messiah, Himself, Jesus Christ was a direct descendant of this Moabite woman. Do I mean that Jesus was not 100 percent pure Jewish blood? I sure do! And wait, there is something even more specific to our barren state.
When God chose Mary to carry and deliver His Son into this world, it put Joseph, her fiancé, in a challenging predicament. He would have to accept the public shame and humiliation of a pregnant fiancée. The "real" father of the baby was unknown by most, and believed by fewer. But Joseph believed Mary, he believed the angel, and he adopted Jesus into his family, teaching Him his carpenter's trade and raising Him as his own son without cowering to public disdain or indignation.
That's right—in a very real, God-ordained way, Jesus was an adopted son.
Adopted by GodTwo central figures of the two testaments of God's Word—of God's plan—are adopted. God used Moses to free the Israelites from Egyptian oppression and He used Jesus to free humankind from sin forever. And all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are also adopted sons and daughters.
Paul summarizes this brief adoption survey through Moses and Jesus: "For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption, as sons by which we cry out, 'Abba! Father!' … and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him" (Rom. 8:14-15, 17, NASB).
There is no doubt that infertility is a difficult, painful issue and can often lead to a season of doubt or despair. But there is also no doubt that adoption is a God-honoring option to consider when the traditional road to parenting goes unanswered. We are not guaranteed the answers that we always want, but we are guaranteed answers that will glorify Christ and allow us to live in a spirit of adoption.
Thank you, Lord, for choosing to include us in your eternal family.