ADOPTION: YOU CAN DO IT! Blog post #19, Chapter 14 – Bridging Past and Future Lives with Perspective—Successful Adulthood Is the Goal

Posted December 23, 2016

This is my second blog post today to catch-up from being on vacation. I hope you’ll read, enjoy, and share this excerpt from ADOPTION: YOU CAN DO IT! A Husband-Wife Guide for Successfully Raising Adopted Children in the Christian Home, available next month!

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. II Corinthians 5:17

We all have a past. Sometimes I have to remember the horrible pit of sin I lived in during my college and single-gal career days. Wow, I have grown and changed and repented of some pretty evil stuff! Thankfully, by the Lord’s grace and mercy, we can all become a new creation with a future that is better than our past. With some exceptions, most adopted kids have a pretty horrible past, whether from their own doing, or more likely from their birth parents’ choices or a tyrannical nation’s policies. When we adopt these kids from hard places into our stable families it can be culture shock for them, as well as us. Somehow, we have to find common ground and begin to build a relationship on love and understanding in order to enable them to become a part of their new family, and become a new creation themselves. We cannot do this without relying on and trusting in the Lord for decisions large and small.

As mentioned in an earlier chapter, you may have seen the image of a large wooden cross bridging two land masses divided by a very deep and wide crevasse. On one side of the land it says MAN; on the other side it says GOD; in the deep crevasse it says SIN. On the cross over the deep crevasse, it says JESUS CHRIST. Just as our Savior is a bridge between man and God, we need to be a bridge for our adopted kids between their traumatic past and their hoped-for future. We are not perfect as our Savior is, so there is a lot of struggle and sin as we are trying to be that bridge. Nevertheless, we can be the means for our kids to cross over the deep crevasse of their past and into their successful adulthood.

Have you ever thought about who and what your kids will become as adults? The Bible says that where there is no vision the people will perish. If we don’t envision a bright future for our kids, biological and adopted, they will perish. When my husband and I first began our homeschooling journey 20 years ago, we did a little exercise that was well worth the half hour it took. We wrote down on one sheet of lined paper our ‘vision’ for our kids: we envisioned what we hoped they would be like at 20, 30, 40, 50, and even 60 years of age. We had goals for them that included: to know Christ, to be happily married, to enjoy raising their children, to have a job/work in which they were content, to be financially stable, to live conservatively with Biblical values, to vote as patriots, and even to consider us as their friends and mentors.

Writing all that down really put perspective into what we were about to undertake with homeschooling. It wasn’t about getting a perfect score on the SAT or obtaining a full-ride scholarship to Harvard. It was about becoming a person that we would call ‘friend,’ who would know Christ as Savior and Lord, would be able to raise our grandchildren successfully, and be a blessing to society at-large.

Whether you are at the beginning of your adoption journey or in the thick of it, I would encourage you to look beyond the battles of food, entertainment, technology, school, and obedience. Look to the future and help your children reach what you imagine and dream for them. Share that with them, and help them dream as well. If none of us have dreams, none of us will endeavor to work hard on our character, hard at our education or job, put up with the tough stuff of life, and get through the bad days if there isn’t a goal or reward to be reached in the end. Ultimately, we all want to reach for that prize called Heaven, to share eternity with the Savior at His feet, with our loved ones. Those should be the ultimate goals of our focus and effort as Christian parents.

sharimcminn

Shari Howard McMinn is an author, editor, farmer, writer, and most importantly Mom to 11 children. Widowed very unexpectedly on June 2, 2013, Shari continued the direction of her life built with her late husband, Cary, and launched her public speaking and writing business which he had often encouraged her to do. Drawing from her 'over the top' life, she writes non-fiction and presents PowerPoint talks on issues related to family life, including adoption, childhood nutrition, family economics, homeschooling, and proactive parenting. She is available for broadcast interviews and presentations in Colorado and surrounding states, as well as Florida and Georgia. A dynamic speaker, Shari engages the audience with her true-life storytelling and practical advice based on experience and biblical wisdom.