Waiting and Remembering our Adoption

This week, on Tuesday, we went to court for Evie’s adoption. We arrived a little before 9am and waited until sometime around 11am when they told us that our case would be heard at 2:30pm. Since we were all tired of sitting quietly in our best clothes, we took a little break and went to lunch at a place with a playground for our younger children to get some of their energy out. Here is a picture of us waiting that morning outside the courtroom. 

When we came back at 2:00, the judge was ready to see us, so we gathered everyone involved in the case and spent the next 2 hours in the judges chambers in one of the most emotionally taxing situations I could imagine. Adoption is a beautiful thing, but if there was not brokenness, there wouldn’t be any reason for it. Rehashing that story is heartbreaking and painful. I won’t share any of those details here. That is Evie’s story to share or not when she gets older. There were also some unexpected challenges that arose legally.  Because Evie is two years old and was missing naptime and the judge needed to be able to hear each person speak, I was in and out of the room. As he was wrapping things up he asked if I wanted to come back in and had anything to add. I had been wanting to speak up at several points in the discussion, and now I had an opportunity. This is basically what I said:

“We love Evie Kisakye and want her to be a permanent part of our family. We live here in Uganda and we want her to know her birth family. But we also want her to be free to travel with us and to have all the rights and privileges of being fully our daughter.”

After I spoke the judge told us he would give us his ruling sometime next week. So now we wait. 

As I was speaking those words to the judge, it occurred to me that God has adopted me into his family and he wants me to experience all the rights and privileges of being his daughter. Sometimes I forget that the God of the universe has loved me. He went through something much more difficult than the adoption process here in Uganda to bring me into His family. He sacrificed his one and only Son in order to adopt you and me. We are fully his children, his heirs. Why is it that I so often feel like I need to take care of myself when God is my loving Father and wants to care for me? I am learning, slowly by slowly, to trust my Heavenly Father with all things. Right now, I am trusting Him with this adoption process. I’m trusting that He loves us and Evie more than we could ever imagine and is working for our good even through this time of waiting. And as we walk the challenging road of adoption, I thank God that He walked a much more difficult one in order to adopt me and you. Let’s live and enjoy the full rights of being His sons and daughters. 

“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”

‭‭Galatians‬ ‭4:4-7‬ ‭ESV‬‬