In Spite of Who We Are

My husband and I are in the process of obtaining our adoption-foster care license. We’ve been pursuing this for the past 6 months. God just didn't think we had enough crazy in our life so he called us to this too. I previously wrote about our God-inspired journey. If you would like to read more, click here.

Our last appointment with the social worker is this morning. The paperwork is mountainous. The classes are time consuming. The extra babysitting fees are inconvenient.

But God.

But God… has a plan, has a purpose, and has a way.

My husband and I sit around the kitchen table scribbling across the pages and checking the appropriate boxes on our “Child Acceptance Survey” packet. These answers convey to social services what type of behaviors and/or characteristics we are willing to accept in an adoptive child. We are to mark each section with preferred, acceptable, would consider, and unacceptable.

There is an endless list of heart wrenching disorders: seizure disorder, blindness, difficulty attaching to others, sexual abuse, conceived out of rape, etc.

I think to myself, “Thank goodness God loves us just the way we are.”

As my black ballpoint pen scratches the surface of each page, God speaks.

“I don’t love you just the way you are. I love you in spite of who you are.”

God loves us in spite of our imperfections, mistakes, flaws, messes, rough edges, and disobedience.

To me, that makes the gift of grace so much more wonderful. Don’t you think?

This beautiful insight into God’s love inspires me to rethink how I love other people. God fine tunes my heart strings. My heart shifts from neutral driving me to a place where love comingles with acceptance.

God urges me to think more like he does—to love even though problems will arise, even though perfection will never be reached, even though hard times might be ahead, even though I may want to pull my last hair out, and even though I might feel like giving up.

Finding God while filling out a survey doesn’t surprise me. It’s so comforting knowing that God’s divine presence can fill even the smallest, most mundane moments in life.

Whether we’re sittin' in our kitchen, sippin' a peppermint mocha (my favorite), or servin' at a homeless shelter, God is there to show us how to love others the way He first loved us.

… in spite of who we are.

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, italics added).